Flask: How to read a file in application root?

Question

My Flask application structure looks like

application_top/          application/                     static/                           english_words.txt                     templates/                              main.html                      urls.py                      views.py          runserver.py 

When I run the runserver.py, it starts the server at localhost:5000. In my views.py, I try to open the file english.txt as

f = open('/static/english.txt') 

It gives error IOError: No such file or directory

How can I access this file?

Answer 1

I think the issue is you put / in the path. Remove / because static is at the same level as views.py.

I suggest making a settings.py the same level as views.py Or many Flask users prefer to use __init__.py but I don't.

application_top/     application/           static/               english_words.txt           templates/               main.html           urls.py           views.py           settings.py     runserver.py 

If this is how you would set up, try this:

#settings.py import os # __file__ refers to the file settings.py  APP_ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))   # refers to application_top APP_STATIC = os.path.join(APP_ROOT, 'static') 

Now in your views, you can simply do:

import os from settings import APP_STATIC with open(os.path.join(APP_STATIC, 'english_words.txt')) as f:     f.read() 

Adjust the path and level based on your requirement.