File handling is an important part of any web application.

Python has several functions for creating, reading,

updating, and deleting files.

File Handling

The key function for working with files in Python is the open() function.

The open() function takes two parameters; filename, and mode.

There are four different methods (modes) for opening a file:

"r" - Read - Default value. Opens a file for reading, error if the file does not exist

"a" - Append - Opens a file for appending, creates the file if it does not exist

"w" - Write - Opens a file for writing, creates the file if it does not exist

"x" - Create - Creates the specified file, returns an error if the file exists

In addition you can specify if the file should be handled as binary or text mode

"t" - Text - Default value. Text mode

"b" - Binary - Binary mode (e.g. images)

Syntax

To open a file for reading it is enough to specify the name of the file:

f = open("demofile.txt")

The code above is the same as:

f = open("demofile.txt", "rt")

Because "r" for read, and "t" for text are the default values, you do not need to specify them.

Note: Make sure the file exist, or else you will get an error.

Open a File on the Server

Asume we have the following file, located in the same folder as Python:

demofile.txt

Hello! Welcome to demofile.txt

This file is for testing purposes.
Good Luck!

To open the file, use the built-in open() function.

The open() function returns a file object, which has a read() method for reading the content of the file:

Example

f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.read())

Read Only Parts of the File

By default the read() method returns the whole text, but you can also specify how many character you want to
return:

Example

Return the 5 first characters of the file:

f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.read(5))

Read Lines
You can return one line by using the readline() method:

Example

Read one line of the file:

f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.readline())

By calling readline() two times, you can read the two first lines:

Example

Read two lines of the file:

f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.readline())
print(f.readline())

By looping through the lines of the file, you can read the whole file, line by line:

Example

Loop through the file line by line:

f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
for x in f:
print(x)

Python File Write

Write to an Existing File

To write to an existing file, you must add a parameter to the open() function:

"a" - Append - will append to the end of the file

"w" - Write - will overwrite any existing content

Example

Open the file "demofile.txt" and append content to the file:

f = open("demofile.txt", "a")
f.write("Now the file has one more line!")

Example

Open the file "demofile.txt" and overwrite the content:

f = open("demofile.txt", "w")
f.write("Woops! I have deleted the content!")

Note: the "w" method will overwrite the entire file.

Create a New File

To create a new file in Python, use the open() method, with one of the following parameters:

"x" - Create - will create a file, returns an error if the file exist

"a" - Append - will create a file if the specified file does not exist

"w" - Write - will create a file if the specified file does not exist

Example

Create a file called "myfile.txt":

f = open("myfile.txt", "x")
Result: a new empty file is created!

Example

Create a new file if it does not exist:

f = open("myfile.txt", "w")

Python Delete File

Delete a File

To delete a file, you must import the OS module, and run its os.remove() function:

Example

Remove the file "demofile.txt":

import os
os.remove("demofile.txt")

Check if File exist:

To avoid getting an error, you might want to check if the file exist before you try to delete it:

Example

Check if file exist, then delete it:

import os
if os.path.exists("demofile.txt"):
os.remove("demofile.txt")
else:
print("The file does not exist")

Delete Folder

To delete an entire folder, use the os.rmdir() method:

Example

Remove the folder "myfolder":

import os
os.rmdir("myfolder")

Note: You can only remove empty folders.

Python File I/O

In this article, you'll learn about Python file operations. More specifically, opening a file, reading from it, writing
into it, closing it and various file methods you should be aware of.

What is a file?

File is a named location on disk to store related information. It is used to permanently store data in a non-volatile
memory (e.g. hard disk).

Since, random access memory (RAM) is volatile which loses its data when computer is turned off, we use files for
future use of the data.

When we want to read from or write to a file we need to open it first. When we are done, it needs to be closed, so
that resources that are tied with the file are freed.

Hence, in Python, a file operation takes place in the following order.

 Open a file
 Read or write (perform operation)
 Close the file

How to open a file?

Python has a built-in function open() to open a file. This function returns a file object, also called a handle, as it is
used to read or modify the file accordingly.

>>> f = open("test.txt") # open file in current directory

>>> f = open("C:/Python33/README.txt") # specifying full path

We can specify the mode while opening a file. In mode, we specify whether we want to read 'r', write 'w' or append
'a' to the file. We also specify if we want to open the file in text mode or binary mode. The default is reading in text
mode. In this mode, we get strings when reading from the file.

On the other hand, binary mode returns bytes and this is the mode to be used when dealing with non-text files like
image or exe files.

Python File Modes

Mode Description
'r' Open a file for reading. (default)
'w' Open a file for writing. Creates a new file if it does not
exist or truncates the file if it exists.
'x' Open a file for exclusive creation. If the file already
exists, the operation fails.
'a' Open for appending at the end of the file without
truncating it. Creates a new file if it does not exist.
't' Open in text mode. (default)
'b' Open in binary mode.
'+' Open a file for updating (reading and writing)
f = open("test.txt") # equivalent to 'r' or 'rt'
f = open("test.txt",'w') # write in text mode
f = open("img.bmp",'r+b') # read and write in binary mode
Unlike other languages, the character 'a' does not imply the number 97 until it is encoded using ASCII (or other
equivalent encodings). Moreover, the default encoding is platform dependent. In windows, it is 'cp1252' but 'utf-8' in
Linux. So, we must not also rely on the default encoding or else our code will behave differently in different
platforms. Hence, when working with files in text mode, it is highly recommended to specify the encoding type.

f = open("test.txt",mode = 'r',encoding = 'utf-8')

How to close a file Using Python?

When we are done with operations to the file, we need to properly close the file.

Closing a file will free up the resources that were tied with the file and is done using Python close() method.

Python has a garbage collector to clean up unreferenced objects but, we must not rely on it to close the file.

f = open("test.txt",encoding = 'utf-8')

# perform file operations

f.close()

This method is not entirely safe. If an exception occurs when we are performing some operation with the file, the
code exits without closing the file.

A safer way is to use a try...finally block.

try:

f = open("test.txt",encoding = 'utf-8')

# perform file operations

finally:

f.close()

This way, we are guaranteed that the file is properly closed even if an exception is raised, causing program flow to
stop.

The best way to do this is using the with statement. This ensures that the file is closed when the block inside with is
exited.

We don't need to explicitly call the close() method. It is done internally.

with open("test.txt",encoding = 'utf-8') as f:

 # perform file operations

How to write to File Using Python?

In order to write into a file in Python, we need to open it in write 'w', append 'a' or exclusive creation 'x' mode. We
need to be careful with the 'w' mode as it will overwrite into the file if it already exists. All previous data are erased.
Writing a string or sequence of bytes (for binary files) is done using write() method. This method returns the number
of characters written to the file.

with open("test.txt",'w',encoding = 'utf-8') as f:

f.write("my first file\n")

f.write("This file\n\n")

f.write("contains three lines\n")

This program will create a new file named 'test.txt' if it does not exist. If it does exist, it is overwritten.

We must include the newline characters ourselves to distinguish different lines.

How to read files in Python?

To read a file in Python, we must open the file in reading mode.

There are various methods available for this purpose. We can use the read(size) method to read in size number of
data. If size parameter is not specified, it reads and returns up to the end of the file.

>>> f = open("test.txt",'r',encoding = 'utf-8')

>>> f.read(4) # read the first 4 data

'This'

>>> f.read(4) # read the next 4 data

' is '

>>> f.read() # read in the rest till end of file

'my first file\nThis file\ncontains three lines\n'

>>> f.read() # further reading returns empty sting

''

We can see that, the read() method returns newline as '\n'. Once the end of file is reached, we get empty string on
further reading.

We can change our current file cursor (position) using the seek() method. Similarly, the tell() method returns our
current position (in number of bytes).

>>> f.tell() # get the current file position

56

>>> f.seek(0) # bring file cursor to initial position

>>> print(f.read()) # read the entire file

This is my first file

This file

contains three lines

We can read a file line-by-line using a for loop. This is both efficient and fast.

>>> for line in f:

... print(line, end = '')

...
This is my first file

This file

contains three lines

The lines in file itself has a newline character '\n'.

Moreover, the print() end parameter to avoid two newlines when printing.

Alternately, we can use readline() method to read individual lines of a file. This method reads a file till the newline,
including the newline character.

>>> f.readline()

'This is my first file\n'

>>> f.readline()

'This file\n'

>>> f.readline()

'contains three lines\n'

>>> f.readline()

''

Lastly, the readlines() method returns a list of remaining lines of the entire file. All these reading method return
empty values when end of file (EOF) is reached.

>>> f.readlines()

['This is my first file\n', 'This file\n', 'contains three lines\n']

Python File Methods

There are various methods available with the file object. Some of them have been used in above examples. Here is
the complete list of methods in text mode with a brief description.

Method Description
close() Close an open file. It has no effect if the file is already
closed.
detach() Separate the underlying binary buffer from the
TextIOBase and return it.
fileno() Return an integer number (file descriptor) of the file.
flush() Flush the write buffer of the file stream.
isatty() Return True if the file stream is interactive.
read(n) Read atmost n characters form the file. Reads till end of
file if it is negative or None.
readable() Returns True if the file stream can be read from.
readline(n=-1) Read and return one line from the file. Reads in at most
n bytes if specified.
readlines(n=-1) Read and return a list of lines from the file. Reads in at
most n bytes/characters if specified.
seek(offset,from=SEEK_SET) Change the file position to offset bytes, in reference to
from (start, current, end).
seekable() Returns True if the file stream supports random access.
tell() Returns the current file location.
truncate(size=None) Resize the file stream to size bytes. If size is not
specified, resize to current location.
writable() Returns True if the file stream can be written to.
write(s) Write string s to the file and return the number of
characters written.
writelines(lines) Write a list of lines to the file