Copy files to network path or drive using python on OSX

Question

I have a similar question like the one asked here but I need it to work on OSX.

How to copy files to network path or drive using Python

So i want to save a file on a SMB network share. Can this be done?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, it can be done. First, mount your SMB network share to the local filesystem by calling a command like this from Python:

mount -t smbfs //user@server/sharename share

(You can do it using the subprocess module). share is the name of the directory where the SMB network share will be mounted to, and I guess it has to be writable by the user. After that, you can copy the file using shutil.copyfile. Finally, you have to un-mount the SMB network share:

umount share

Probably it's the best to create a context manager in Python that takes care of mounting and unmounting:

from contextlib import contextmanager
import os
import shutil
import subprocess

@contextmanager
def mounted(remote_dir, local_dir):
    local_dir = os.path.abspath(local_dir)
    retcode = subprocess.call(["/sbin/mount", "-t", "smbfs", remote_dir, local_dir])
    if retcode != 0:
        raise OSError("mount operation failed")
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        retcode = subprocess.call(["/sbin/umount", local_dir])
        if retcode != 0:
            raise OSError("umount operation failed")

with mounted(remote_dir, local_dir):
    shutil.copy(file_to_be_copied, local_dir)

The above code snippet is not tested, but it should work in general (apart from syntax errors that I did not notice). Also note that mounted is very similar to the network_share_auth context manager I posted in my other answer, so you might as well combine the two by checking what platform you are on using the platform module and then calling the appropriate commands.