One of the things that really gets on my nerves when working with file paths in Python is the aesthetically ugly use of os.path functions to perform even simple manipulations of path names.

Luckily, Jason Orendorff’s path.py module provides a very simple wrapper over these path operations. It contains a single path class which you can use like this:

>>> from path import path
>>> homedir = path('/Users/zacharyvoase/')
>>> homedir
path('/Users/zacharyvoase/')  

You can manipulate these paths easily, using methods and operator overrides. path also has a lot of the functions from shutil, glob, os.path, et cetera defined as methods.

In fact, this module was the inspiration for URLObject’s use of operator overrides for URL manipulation.

Examples

Path Manipulation

>>> filename = homedir / 'file.txt'
>>> filename
path('/Users/zacharyvoase/file.txt')  
>>> filename.splitext()
(path('/Users/zacharyvoase/file'), '.txt')

Filesystem Operations

>>> filename.exists()
False  
>>> filename.touch()
>>> filename.exists()
True

>>> homedir.isdir()
True  
>>> homedir.listdir()
[path('/Users/zacharyvoase/.bash_history'), ...]

Globs

>>> homedir.files('*.txt')
[path('/Users/zacharyvoase/file.txt')]
>>> homedir.dirs('Desk*')
[path('/Users/zacharyvoase/Desktop')]

Installing path

There is a slight problem in that Jason’s website, where the original version of the module was hosted, has disappeared. Luckily, the path module lives on in the Paver project, which can be installed via easy_install Paver. You can then use the class with from paver.path import path.

How I Use path

I like to put path to use in my Django settings module. Have a look at this for an example:

from paver.path import path

PROJECT_ROOT = path(__file__).abspath().dirname()

MEDIA_ROOT = PROJECT_ROOT / 'media'  
UPLOAD_ROOT = PROJECT_ROOT / 'uploads'

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (  
    PROJECT_ROOT / 'templates',
)

Elsewhere in my Django project, I can then use those paths without having to import os.path and friends.