shutil.copytree without files

Question

I'm trying use shutil.copytree:

shutil.copytree(SOURCE_DIR, TARGET_DIR, ignore=None)

This copy also files in folder. I need copy only folders without ANY files. How to do it?

Answer 1

If you want ignore pattern functionality with os.walk(), then:

ignorePatterns=[".git"]
def create_empty_dirtree(src, dest, onerror=None):
    src = os.path.abspath(src)
    src_prefix = len(src) + len(os.path.sep)
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(src, onerror=onerror):
        for pattern in ignorePatterns:
            if pattern in root:
                break
        else:
            #If the above break didn't work, this part will be executed
            for dirname in dirs:
                for pattern in ignorePatterns:
                    if pattern in dirname:
                        break
                else:
                    #If the above break didn't work, this part will be executed
                    dirpath = os.path.join(dest, root[src_prefix:], dirname)
                    try:
                        os.makedirs(dirpath,exist_ok=True)
                    except OSError as e:
                        if onerror is not None:
                            onerror(e)
                continue;#If the above else didn't executed, this will be reached

        continue;#If the above else didn't executed, this will be reached

This will ignore .git directory.

Note: This requires Python >=3.2 as I used the exist_ok option with makedirs which isn't available on older versions.

Answer 2

Here's an implementation of @Oz123's solution which is based on os.walk():

import os

def create_empty_dirtree(srcdir, dstdir, onerror=None):
    srcdir = os.path.abspath(srcdir)
    srcdir_prefix = len(srcdir) + len(os.path.sep)
    os.makedirs(dstdir)
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(srcdir, onerror=onerror):
        for dirname in dirs:
            dirpath = os.path.join(dstdir, root[srcdir_prefix:], dirname)
            try:
                os.mkdir(dirpath)
            except OSError as e:
                if onerror is not None:
                    onerror(e)

Answer 3

You should consider using os.walk.

Here is an example for os.walk. This way you could list all the directories and then create them with os.mkdir.

Answer 4

use distutils.dir_util.create_tree to just copy directory structure (not files)

note : the argument files is a list of filenames. if you want something that would work as shutils.copytree:

import os
import distutils.dir_util
def copy_tree(source, dest, **kwargs):
    filenames = [os.path.join(path, file_) for path, _, files in os.walk(source) for file_ in files]
    distutils.dir_util.create_tree(dest, filenames, **kwargs)

Answer 5

You can do that by providing a "ignore" function

def ig_f(dir, files):
    return [f for f in files if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(dir, f))]

shutil.copytree(SRC, DES, ignore=ig_f)

Basically, when you call copytree, it will recursively go to each child folder and provide a list of files in that folder to the ignore function to check if those files are suitable based on a pattern. The ignored files will be returned as a list in the end of the function and then, copytree will only copy items excluding from that list (which in your case, contains all the files in the current folder)