How can I safely create a nested directory in Pyth

Question

What is the most elegant way to check if the directory a file is going to be written to exists, and if not, create the directory using Python? Here is what I tried:

import os

file_path = "/my/directory/filename.txt"
directory = os.path.dirname(file_path)

try:
    os.stat(directory)
except:
    os.mkdir(directory)       

f = file(filename)

Somehow, I missed os.path.exists (thanks kanja, Blair, and Douglas). This is what I have now:

def ensure_dir(file_path):
    directory = os.path.dirname(file_path)
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        os.makedirs(directory)

Is there a flag for "open", that makes this happen automatically?

Answer 1

I use os.path.exists(), here is a Python 3 script that can be used to check if a directory exists, create one if it does not exist, and delete it if it does exist (if desired).

It prompts users for input of the directory and can be easily modified.

Answer 2

Call the function create_dir() at the entry point of your program/project.

import os

def create_dir(directory):
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        print('Creating Directory '+directory)
        os.makedirs(directory)

create_dir('Project directory')

Answer 3

I see two answers with good qualities, each with a small flaw, so I will give my take on it:

Try os.path.exists, and consider os.makedirs for the creation.

import os
if not os.path.exists(directory):
    os.makedirs(directory)

As noted in comments and elsewhere, there's a race condition – if the directory is created between the os.path.exists and the os.makedirs calls, the os.makedirs will fail with an OSError. Unfortunately, blanket-catching OSError and continuing is not foolproof, as it will ignore a failure to create the directory due to other factors, such as insufficient permissions, full disk, etc.

One option would be to trap the OSError and examine the embedded error code (see Is there a cross-platform way of getting information from Python’s OSError):

import os, errno

try:
    os.makedirs(directory)
except OSError as e:
    if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
        raise

Alternatively, there could be a second os.path.exists, but suppose another created the directory after the first check, then removed it before the second one – we could still be fooled.

Depending on the application, the danger of concurrent operations may be more or less than the danger posed by other factors such as file permissions. The developer would have to know more about the particular application being developed and its expected environment before choosing an implementation.

Answer 4

You can use os.listdir for this:

import os
if 'dirName' in os.listdir('parentFolderPath')
    print('Directory Exists')

Answer 5

I would personally recommend that you use os.path.isdir() to test instead of os.path.exists().

>>> os.path.exists('/tmp/dirname')
True
>>> os.path.exists('/tmp/dirname/filename.etc')
True
>>> os.path.isdir('/tmp/dirname/filename.etc')
False
>>> os.path.isdir('/tmp/fakedirname')
False

If you have:

>>> dir = raw_input(":: ")

And a foolish user input:

:: /tmp/dirname/filename.etc

... You're going to end up with a directory named filename.etc when you pass that argument to os.makedirs() if you test with os.path.exists().

Answer 6

Check if a directory exists and create it if necessary?

The direct answer to this is, assuming a simple situation where you don't expect other users or processes to be messing with your directory:

if not os.path.exists(d):
    os.makedirs(d)

or if making the directory is subject to race conditions (i.e. if after checking the path exists, something else may have already made it) do this:

import errno
try:
    os.makedirs(d)
except OSError as exception:
    if exception.errno != errno.EEXIST:
        raise

But perhaps an even better approach is to sidestep the resource contention issue, by using temporary directories via tempfile:

import tempfile

d = tempfile.mkdtemp()

Here's the essentials from the online doc:

mkdtemp(suffix='', prefix='tmp', dir=None)
    User-callable function to create and return a unique temporary
    directory.  The return value is the pathname of the directory.

    The directory is readable, writable, and searchable only by the
    creating user.

    Caller is responsible for deleting the directory when done with it.

New in Python 3.5: pathlib.Path with exist_ok

There's a new Path object (as of 3.4) with lots of methods one would want to use with paths - one of which is mkdir.

(For context, I'm tracking my weekly rep with a script. Here's the relevant parts of code from the script that allow me to avoid hitting Stack Overflow more than once a day for the same data.)

First the relevant imports:

from pathlib import Path
import tempfile

We don't have to deal with os.path.join now - just join path parts with a /:

directory = Path(tempfile.gettempdir()) / 'sodata'

Then I idempotently ensure the directory exists - the exist_ok argument shows up in Python 3.5:

directory.mkdir(exist_ok=True)

Here's the relevant part of the documentation:

If exist_ok is true, FileExistsError exceptions will be ignored (same behavior as the POSIX mkdir -p command), but only if the last path component is not an existing non-directory file.

Here's a little more of the script - in my case, I'm not subject to a race condition, I only have one process that expects the directory (or contained files) to be there, and I don't have anything trying to remove the directory.

todays_file = directory / str(datetime.datetime.utcnow().date())
if todays_file.exists():
    logger.info("todays_file exists: " + str(todays_file))
    df = pd.read_json(str(todays_file))

Path objects have to be coerced to str before other APIs that expect str paths can use them.

Perhaps Pandas should be updated to accept instances of the abstract base class, os.PathLike.