{"id":470,"date":"2016-03-20T00:22:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/?p=470"},"modified":"2018-09-04T22:58:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T14:58:23","slug":"how-to-traverse-all-folders-and-files-within-a-folder-dynamically-in-python-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/how-to-traverse-all-folders-and-files-within-a-folder-dynamically-in-python-3\/","title":{"rendered":"How to traverse all folders and files within a folder dynamically in Python 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had this requirement where I need to be able to look into a folder and pick up any configuration files for my Python 3 application. In order to achieve that, I first set an exploratory task to get the Python 3 code for traversing all folders and files within a folder.<\/p>\n

For this exploratory task, I had created a script that will traverse the folders and files that are contained within a folder and print out their full paths.<\/p>\n

Python 3 code for traversing all folders and files within a folder dynamically, from bottom to top<\/h3>\n
\r\nimport os\r\n\r\ndef traverseDir(folderPath):\r\n\r\n    for subFolderRoot, foldersWithinSubFolder, files in os.walk(folderPath, topdown=False):\r\n\r\n        for fileName in files:\r\n            print(os.path.join(subFolderRoot, fileName))\r\n\r\n        for folderNameWithinSubFolder in foldersWithinSubFolder:\r\n            print(os.path.join(subFolderRoot, folderNameWithinSubFolder))\r\n\r\n\r\ntraverseDir('\/sample-dir')\r\n<\/pre>\n
In the above script, I defined a function traverseDir<\/code> which will take in the path of the folder which the caller wishes to traverse via the folderPath<\/code> variable.<\/p>\n
It then utilises the os.walk<\/a><\/code> function to traverse the contents of the folder specified by folderPath<\/code>. By using topdown=False<\/code>, we tell os.walk<\/code> to traverse the folder tree depth-first. <\/p>\n
Each iteration of os.walk<\/code> returns us the path to a subfolder, a list of folders and a list of files within that subfolder. With that, I then:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. loop the list of files and print their full path.<\/li>\n
  2. loop the list of folders and print their full path.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    Sample use case and output<\/h3>\n
    A sample file hierarchy<\/h4>\n
    In order to test whether the Python 3 script is able to traverse all folders and files within a folder dynamically, I created some files and folders with the following hireachical structure:<\/p>\n
    \r\n\/sample-dir\r\n--fileA.txt\r\n--folderA\r\n----fileB.txt\r\n----folderC\r\n------fileC.txt\r\n--folderB\r\n----fileD.txt\r\n----folderD\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Output from running the Python 3 script (with topdown=False<\/code> supplied to os.walk<\/code>)<\/h4>\n
    Running the Python 3 script that I had created on \/sample-dir, I would yield the following result:<\/p>\n
    \r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/folderC\/fileC.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/fileB.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/folderC\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\/fileD.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\/folderD\r\n\/sample-dir\/fileA.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Output from running the Python 3 script (with topdown=True<\/code> supplied to os.walk<\/code>)<\/h4>\n
    Running the Python 3 script on \/sample-dir<\/code> with topdown=True<\/code> I would yield the following result:<\/p>\n
    \r\n\/sample-dir\/fileA.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/fileB.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/folderC\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderA\/folderC\/fileC.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\/fileD.txt\r\n\/sample-dir\/folderB\/folderD\r\n<\/pre>\n\n