How can I calculate a hash for a filesystem-directory using Python?

Question

I'm using this code to calculate hash value for a file:

m = hashlib.md5()
with open("calculator.pdf", 'rb') as fh:
    while True:
        data = fh.read(8192)
        if not data:
            break
        m.update(data)
    hash_value = m.hexdigest()

    print  hash_value

when I tried it on a folder "folder"I got

IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: folder

How could I calculate the hash value for a folder ?

Answer 1

Use checksumdir python package available for calculating checksum/hash of directory. It's available at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/checksumdir/1.0.5

Usage :

import checksumdir
hash = checksumdir.dirhash("c:\\temp")
print hash

Answer 2

Here is an implementation that uses pathlib.Path instead of relying on os.walk. It sorts the directory contents before iterating so it should be repeatable on multiple platforms. It also updates the hash with the names of files/directories, so adding empty files and directories will change the hash.

Version with type annotations (Python 3.6 or above):

import hashlib
from _hashlib import HASH as Hash
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Union


def md5_update_from_file(filename: Union[str, Path], hash: Hash) -> Hash:
    assert Path(filename).is_file()
    with open(str(filename), "rb") as f:
        for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(4096), b""):
            hash.update(chunk)
    return hash


def md5_file(filename: Union[str, Path]) -> str:
    return str(md5_update_from_file(filename, hashlib.md5()).hexdigest())


def md5_update_from_dir(directory: Union[str, Path], hash: Hash) -> Hash:
    assert Path(directory).is_dir()
    for path in sorted(Path(directory).iterdir(), key=lambda p: str(p).lower()):
        hash.update(path.name.encode())
        if path.is_file():
            hash = md5_update_from_file(path, hash)
        elif path.is_dir():
            hash = md5_update_from_dir(path, hash)
    return hash


def md5_dir(directory: Union[str, Path]) -> str:
    return str(md5_update_from_dir(directory, hashlib.md5()).hexdigest())

Without type annotations:

import hashlib
from pathlib import Path


def md5_update_from_file(filename, hash):
    assert Path(filename).is_file()
    with open(str(filename), "rb") as f:
        for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(4096), b""):
            hash.update(chunk)
    return hash


def md5_file(filename):
    return md5_update_from_file(filename, hashlib.md5()).hexdigest()


def md5_update_from_dir(directory, hash):
    assert Path(directory).is_dir()
    for path in sorted(Path(directory).iterdir()):
        hash.update(path.name.encode())
        if path.is_file():
            hash = md5_update_from_file(path, hash)
        elif path.is_dir():
            hash = md5_update_from_dir(path, hash)
    return hash


def md5_dir(directory):
    return md5_update_from_dir(directory, hashlib.md5()).hexdigest()

Condensed version if you only need to hash directories:

def md5_update_from_dir(directory, hash):
    assert Path(directory).is_dir()
    for path in sorted(Path(directory).iterdir(), key=lambda p: str(p).lower()):
        hash.update(path.name.encode())
        if path.is_file():
            with open(path, "rb") as f:
                for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(4096), b""):
                    hash.update(chunk)
        elif path.is_dir():
            hash = md5_update_from_dir(path, hash)
    return hash


def md5_dir(directory):
    return md5_update_from_dir(directory, hashlib.md5()).hexdigest()

Usage: md5_hash = md5_dir("/some/directory")