How to create a temporary directory and get its path/ file name?

Question

How can I create a temporary directory and get its path/file name in Python?

Answer 1

Use the mkdtemp() function from the tempfile module:

import tempfile import shutil  dirpath = tempfile.mkdtemp() # ... do stuff with dirpath shutil.rmtree(dirpath) 

Answer 2

In Python 3, TemporaryDirectory from the tempfile module can be used.

From the examples:

import tempfile  with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmpdirname:      print('created temporary directory', tmpdirname)  # directory and contents have been removed 

To manually control when the directory is removed, don't use a context manager, as in the following example:

import tempfile  temp_dir = tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() print(temp_dir.name) # use temp_dir, and when done: temp_dir.cleanup() 

The documentation also says:

On completion of the context or destruction of the temporary directory object the newly created temporary directory and all its contents are removed from the filesystem.

At the end of the program, for example, Python will clean up the directory if it wasn't removed, e.g. by the context manager or the cleanup() method. Python's unittest may complain of ResourceWarning: Implicitly cleaning up <TemporaryDirectory... if you rely on this, though.