CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpersistencefile-management
mrgou
mrgou

Reputation: 2448

Settings file location in Python programs

I'm finishing a program that I wrote in Python to make sure it's cross-platform. One last hurdle is about saving persistent data such as session history. In Windows, the files would be saved under the user profile's AppData\Local folder, on MacOS, well... I have no idea, and on Linux... it depends.

What are the best practices in such a case? Is there a library that will return the recommended, best-practice location for the platform that runs the application?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 483

Answers (2)

Het Vaghani
Het Vaghani

Reputation: 11

change the sub directory variable with your folder name it will check for all 3 os and create folder their if not exist already and print the folder path.

import platform
from pathlib import Path


# check the os of pc
MACOS, LINUX, WINDOWS = (platform.system() == x for x in ['Darwin', 'Linux', 'Windows'])   

#name whatever you want to use for your application
sub_dir = "example_app"

# Return the appropriate config directory for each operating system
if WINDOWS:
    path = Path.home() / 'AppData' / 'Local' / sub_dir
elif MACOS:  # macOS
    path = Path.home() / 'Library' / 'Application Support' / sub_dir
elif LINUX:
    path = Path.home() / '.config' / sub_dir
else:
    raise ValueError(f'Unsupported operating system: {platform.system()}')

# Create the subdirectory if it does not exist
path.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

print(path)

Upvotes: 1

mrgou
mrgou

Reputation: 2448

Based on @DarkKnight 's implicit confirmation that there is no Python module that returns the preferred location based on each platform (and assuming MacOS follows Linux system standards), I use this code:

import sys
import os

def app_folder(prog: str) -> str:
    def createFolder(directory):
        try:
            if not os.path.exists(directory):
                os.makedirs(directory)
        except OSError:
            raise

    if sys.platform == "win32":
        folder = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), "AppData", "Local", prog)
        createFolder(folder)
        return folder
    else:
        folder = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), "." + prog)
        createFolder(folder)
        return folder

(Note: I probably wouldn't take any risk in hardcoding \ or / as folder separator instead of using os.path.join() since it's already specific to each platform, but I just like to use code I can reuse, even line by line.)

Upvotes: 2

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