filo 2.0.1

Managing files and file series

About

filo is a Python 3 package for file management. Its main purpose is to provide a FileSeries class to manage series of files (e.g. series of images or series of spectra), that use a custom File class. In particular, file creation time is detected automatically and can be accessed as a pandas dataframe.

The package also provides a ResultsBase base class to store data and metadata and save/load them into/from files.

Some other useful functions for file management are also provided. See summary of functions and classes below, and associated docstrings for details.

Install

pip install filo

Contents

FileSeries class

Class to manage series of files of the same type (e.g. image series or spectra series from time-lapse experiments), possibly spread out across multiple folders. The main purpose of the class is to be subclassed in other modules specialized for analysis of specific experiment types, but it can be used as is, i.e. to extract timing info of series of files.

The main idea is that files are attributed a unique identifier (num) that starts at 0 in the first folder. Each file is described by an object of the File class that stores file path, identifier, and a time attribute.

Note: the time attribute is automatically extracted as the creation time of the file (st_mtime), but can be overwritten with external information, or can be defined differently by subclassing the _measure_times() method.

The list of file objects is accessed through the list FileSeries.files containing all filo.File objects (FileSeries.files[i] is the file object with identifier num=i). The correspondence between identifier, actual files, and file times is summarized in the FileSeries.info attribute, which is a pandas DataFrame tied to FileSeries.files, and which can be saved into a csv file. Loading options also exist to update file data using data stored in external files.

FileSeries Methods

• save_info(): save info of files into csv file,
• load_info(): load info of files from csv file (overwrites self.files),
• load_time(): keep current file info but only update time from info in csv file.

FileSeries Attributes and properties

Regular attributes

• folders: list of folders (pathlib.Path objects) across which the file series is spread,
• files: list of files (filo.File objects, see below); self.files[num] is the file of identifier num,
• savepath: directory in which data extracted/analyzed from files is saved, if applicable,
• extension: extension of the files (str).

Read-only properties

(derived from regular attributes and methods)

• info: pandas DataFrame containing info (number, folder, filename, time) time of files; re-calculated every time self.info is called and thus reflects changes in self.files.
• duration: datetime.Timedelta object, time difference between last file and first file in the series

File objects

File objects listed in FileSeries.files have the following attributes:

• path: Pathlib object of the file,
• num: identifier of file within (int). In the series context, num starts at 0 in the first folder,
• time: stores unix time (float, in seconds) when FileSeries.set_times() is called,

with the following additional read-only properties derived from the ones above for convenience

• folder Pathlib object of the parent directory containing the file,
• name: filename (str).

Examples

(See ExampleFileSeries.ipynb for examples with actual data).

from filo import FileSeries

# create series object of .png files located in 2 folders img1 and img2 ------
series = FileSeries(paths=['img1', 'img2'], savepath='analysis', extension='.png')

# Access individual files in the file series ---------------------------------
series.files[0]        # first file in the first folder
series.files[3].path   # actual pathlib object
series.files[55].num   # should always be equal to 55
series.files[10].time  # unix time of file creation

# Manage the infos DataFrame -------------------------------------------------
series.info         # see all file info in form of a pandas DataFrame
series.save_info()  # save info into 'FileFileSeries_Info.txt' (filename can be specified)

# Update FileSeries.files objects and FileSeries.info --------------------------------
series.load_info('Other_File_Info.txt')  # update all file data using data from external file
series.load_time('Other_File_Info.txt')   # update time information but keep other info
series.save_info('FileFileSeries_Info_New.txt')  # save updated info into new txt file

ResultsBase class

This is a base class to store analysis results and associated metadata (e.g. from file series such as images or spectra) and save them to files, or load the data/metadata from these files.

The class needs to be subclassed by redefining the following methods:

• _load_data(self, filepath)
• _save_data(self, data, filepath)
• _load_metadata(self, filepath)
• _save_metadata(self, metadata, filepath)

Then it provides the following methods and attributes:

Methods

• save(): save analysis data and metadata
• load(): load analysis data and metadata from files (stores them in the data and metadata attributes; see below)
• load_data(): load and return data loaded from file
• load_metadata(): load and return dictionary of metadata loaded from file
• save_data(): save only data
• save_metadata(): save only metadata

Attributes

• data, analysis data
• metadata, analysis metadata

Misc. Functions

# List files and folders -----------------------------------------------------
list_files(path='.', extension='')  # all files in a folder, sorted by name
list_all(path='.')  # all contents of a folder, sorted by name

# Move files and folders -----------------------------------------------------
move_files(src='.', dst='.', extension='')  # move only files with some suffix
move_all(src='.', dst='.')  # move everything

# Line formatting for csv ----------------------------------------------------
load_csv(file, sep='\t', skiprows=2)  # load csv into list of lists
data_to_line(data, sep='\t')  # iterable data to a line with \n, separated with separator sep.
line_to_data(line, sep='\t', dtype=float) # "Inverse of data_to_line(). Returns data as a tuple of type dtype.

# Misc -----------------------------------------------------------------------
batch_file_rename(name, newname, path='.')  # rename recursively files named name into newname
make_iterable(x):  # Transform non-iterables into a tuple, but keeps iterables unchanged

Note: extension is optional, to consider only files with a certain extension, e.g. '.txt'. If left blank, all files considered (excluding directories).

Requirements

(installed automatically by pip if necessary)

• python >= 3.6
• pandas (for managing data in FileSeries class)
• matplotlib (for interactive inspection of series data)
• importlib-metadata

Author

Olivier Vincent ([e-mail])

License

3-clause BSD (see LICENSE file)