Get and create paths for your app

app_paths builds upon appdirs and automatically creates canonical file system paths for storing app and user data on Windows, macOS, Linux and *BSD.

Instead of just strings, app_paths gives developers Path objects from pathlib or aiopath, and it handles path creation efficiently. It also adds async support.

This project uses 📁 aiopath as an async pathlib replacement.

Use case

First, let's take a look at appdirs:

from pathlib import Path
from appdirs import AppDirs


dirs = AppDirs('app', 'My Name', '0.1.0')

# appdirs will return uncreated paths as strings
user_data: str = dirs.user_data_dir
assert isinstance(user_data, str)

print(user_data)  # '/home/user/.cache/app/0.1.0'

appdirs can generate paths as strings for an app. It does one thing, and it does that one thing well on multiple platforms.

user_data_path = Path(user_data)

# appdirs does not create paths
assert not user_data_path.exists()

However, it's up to app developers to handle creating paths on users' file systems. It's also up to developers to decide how they want to manipulate those paths, using abstractions like os.path, pathlib or aiopath. Developers also have to think about how to efficiently perform path creation.

app_paths takes care of all of that for you.

app_paths automatically gives you pathlib.Path handles for your paths in synchronous apps, and aiopath.AsyncPath handles for async apps.

from app_paths import AppPaths


paths = AppPaths.get_paths('app', 'My Name', '0.1.0')

# app_paths can return paths
user_data: Path = paths.user_data_path
assert isinstance(user_data, Path)

print(user_data)  # '/home/user/.cache/app/0.1.0'

app_paths can create paths on the file system dynamically, and it will cache results so excess I/O isn't performed.

# app_paths can return uncreated paths
assert not user_data.exists()

# but it can also dynamically create paths on the fly
user_data: Path = paths.user_data
assert user_data.exists()

It can do batch creation of app paths, and it will use efficient concurrent I/O in both synchronous and async Python programs.

# create user app paths concurrently
await paths.create_user()

# to run the following you must have write access to all paths
# create site app paths concurrently
await paths.create_site()

# create user and site paths concurrently
await paths.create_all()

Here's how you can do the above asynchronously:

from app_paths import AsyncAppPaths
from aiopath import AsyncPath


paths = await AsyncAppPaths.get_paths('app', 'My Name', '0.1.0')

# app_paths can return AsyncPaths
user_data: AsyncPath = paths.user_data_path
assert isinstance(user_data, AsyncPath)

print(user_data)  # '/home/user/.cache/app/0.1.0'

# app_paths can return uncreated paths
assert not await user_data.exists()

# but it can also dynamically create paths on the fly
user_data: AsyncPath = await paths.user_data
assert await user_data.exists()

# create user app paths concurrently
await paths.create_user()

# to run the following you must have write access to all paths
# create site app paths concurrently
await paths.create_site()

# create user and site paths concurrently
await paths.create_all()

Installation

Requirements

• Windows, macOS or a POSIX compatible operating system
• Python 3.8+

PyPI

$ python3 -m pip install app_paths

Support

Want to support this project and other open-source projects like it?

License

See LICENSE. If you'd like to use this project with a different license, please get in touch.