Access data in package subdirectory

user_84359 0
Viewed 65870

I am writing a python package with modules that need to open data files in a ./data/ subdirectory. Right now I have the paths to the files hardcoded into my classes and functions. I would like to write more robust code that can access the subdirectory regardless of where it is installed on the user's system.

I've tried a variety of methods, but so far I have had no luck. It seems that most of the "current directory" commands return the directory of the system's python interpreter, and not the directory of the module.

This seems like it ought to be a trivial, common problem. Yet I can't seem to figure it out. Part of the problem is that my data files are not .py files, so I can't use import functions and the like.

Any suggestions?

Right now my package directory looks like:

/
__init__.py
module1.py
module2.py
data/   
   data.txt

I am trying to access data.txt from module*.py!

package python
6 Answers

There is often not point in making an answer that details code that does not work as is, but I believe this to be an exception. Python 3.7 added importlib.resources that is supposed to replace pkg_resources. It would work for accessing files within packages that do not have slashes in their names, i.e. 

foo/
    __init__.py
    module1.py
    module2.py
    data/   
       data.txt
    data2.txt

i.e. you could access data2.txt inside package foo with for example

importlib.resources.open_binary('foo', 'data2.txt')

but it would fail with an exception for

>>> importlib.resources.open_binary('foo', 'data/data.txt')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/importlib/resources.py", line 87, in open_binary
    resource = _normalize_path(resource)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/importlib/resources.py", line 61, in _normalize_path
    raise ValueError('{!r} must be only a file name'.format(path))
ValueError: 'data/data2.txt' must be only a file name

This cannot be fixed except by placing __init__.py in data and then using it as a package:

importlib.resources.open_binary('foo.data', 'data.txt')

The reason for this behaviour is "it is by design"; but the design might change...

user_9189590

You can use __file__ to get the path to the package, like this:

import os
this_dir, this_filename = os.path.split(__file__)
DATA_PATH = os.path.join(this_dir, "data", "data.txt")
print open(DATA_PATH).read()
user_218860

I think I hunted down an answer.

I make a module data_path.py, which I import into my other modules containing:

data_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__),'data')

And then I open all my files with 

open(os.path.join(data_path,'filename'), <param>)
user_843590
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