filesnitch 0.1

Snitch up multipart files as one read-only file object

FileSnitch

This is a module allows you to concatenate multiple files on the fly and present as a single read-only file object.

Introduction

In Python Standard Libarary, there is a module fileinput which provides similar function but useful only for text input, supporting only the readline() function. That module does not support rewinding as well.

This module, filesnitch allows one to seek() and read() files. A typical use case is a multipart zip file. For example, we have multiple files: foo.zip.001, foo.zip.002, foo.zip.003. To extract some file from it, we should combine them with the following shell command

cat foo.zip.001 foo.zip.002 foo.zip.003 > foo.zip

Afterwards we can use it, for example using zipfile module in Python

import zipfile
with zipfile.ZipFile("foo.zip") as zipfp:
    for zipinfo in zipfp.infolist():
        print("File {} size {}".format(zipinfo.filename, zipinfo.file_size))

With this module, we can avoid creating a combined file but use the chunks directly:

import zipfile
import filesnitch

with filesnitch.input(files=["foo.zip.001", "foo.zip.002", "foo.zip.003"]) as bigfile:
    with zipfile.ZipFile(bigfile) as zipfp:
        for zipinfo in zipfp.infolist():
            print("File {} size {}".format(zipinfo.filename, zipinfo.file_size))

Generally, multiple files can be concatenated as a file object and use in everywhere that a read-only file object is expected.

Getting the latest code

To get the latest code using git, simply type:

git clone git://github.com/righthandabacus/filesnitch.git

Install

You can use pip to install joblib:

pip install filesnitch

from any directory or:

python setup.py install

from the source directory.

Dependencies

filesnitch has no dependencies besides standard Python libraries. Python 3 required.

Examples

Create a file object of multiple files, tell the total file size, and read the last 20 bytes:

import io
import filesnitch

filenames = ["foo.zip.001", "foo.zip.002", "foo.zip.003"]
fileobj = filesnitch.FileSnitch(filenames)  # by default in binary mode
fileobj.seek(0, io.SEEK_END)
filesize = fileobj.tell()
fileobj.seek(-20, io.SEEK_END)
lastbytes = fileobj.read(20)
print("Total file size {}. Last 20 bytes:\n{}".format(filesize, repr(lastbytes))

Above we use the standard function seek() and tell() to move within the concatenated file as if the file object is a standard io.IOBase. The read() call accepts the size argument for the number of bytes to read. If no size argument provided, it will read until EOF.

Read all files in one shot as a large blob:

import io
import filesnitch

filenames = ["foo.zip.001", "foo.zip.002", "foo.zip.003"]
with filesnitch.FileSnitch(filenames) as fileobj:
	blob = fileobj.readall()

The readall() call is same as read() without argument, both will read until EOF. FileSnitch class can be used as a context manager.