Browse files and subfolders in Python

I’d like to browse through the current folder and all its subfolders and get all the files with .htm|.html extensions. I have found out that it is possible to find out whether an object is a dir or file like this:

import os

dirList = os.listdir("./") # current directory
for dir in dirList:
  if os.path.isdir(dir) == True:
    # I don't know how to get into this dir and do the same thing here
  else:
    # I got file and i can regexp if it is .htm|html

and in the end, I would like to have all the files and their paths in an array. Is something like that possible?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

You can use os.walk() to recursively iterate through a directory and all its subdirectories:

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
    for name in files:
        if name.endswith((".html", ".htm")):
            # whatever

To build a list of these names, you can use a list comprehension:

htmlfiles = [os.path.join(root, name)
             for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path)
             for name in files
             if name.endswith((".html", ".htm"))]

Method 2

I had a similar thing to work on, and this is how I did it.

import os

rootdir = os.getcwd()

for subdir, dirs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
    for file in files:
        #print os.path.join(subdir, file)
        filepath = subdir + os.sep + file

        if filepath.endswith(".html"):
            print (filepath)

Hope this helps.

Method 3

In python 3 you can use os.scandir():

for i in os.scandir(path):
    if i.is_file():
        print('File: ' + i.path)
    elif i.is_dir():
        print('Folder: ' + i.path)

Method 4

Use newDirName = os.path.abspath(dir) to create a full directory path name for the subdirectory and then list its contents as you have done with the parent (i.e. newDirList = os.listDir(newDirName))

You can create a separate method of your code snippet and call it recursively through the subdirectory structure. The first parameter is the directory pathname. This will change for each subdirectory.

This answer is based on the 3.1.1 version documentation of the Python Library. There is a good model example of this in action on page 228 of the Python 3.1.1 Library Reference (Chapter 10 – File and Directory Access).
Good Luck!

Method 5

Slightly altered version of Sven Marnach’s solution..

import os

<p>folder_location = 'C:SomeFolderName'
file_list = create_file_list(folder_location)

def create_file_list(path):
    return_list = []

for filenames in os.walk(path):
    for file_list in filenames:
        for file_name in file_list:
            if file_name.endswith((".txt")):
                return_list.append(file_name)

return return_list
</p>

Method 6

There are two ways works for me.

1. Work with the `os` package and use `'__file__'` to replace the main 
directory when the project locates

import os
script_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)      

path = 'subdirectory/test.txt'
file = os.path.join(script_dir, path)
fileread = open(file,'r') 


2. By using '\' to read or write the file in subfolder 
fileread = open('subdirectory\test.txt','r')

Method 7

from tkinter import *
import os

root = Tk()
file = filedialog.askdirectory()
changed_dir = os.listdir(file)
print(changed_dir)
root.mainloop()

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0