How to open my files in data_folder with pandas using relative path?

Question

Try

import pandas as pd
pd.read_csv("../data_folder/data.csv")

Pandas will start looking from where your current python file is located. Therefore you can move from your current directory to where your data is located with '..' For example:

pd.read_csv('../../../data_folder/data.csv')

Will go 3 levels up and then into a data_folder (assuming it's there) Or

pd.read_csv('data_folder/data.csv')

assuming your data_folder is in the same directory as your .py file.

For non-Windows users:

import pandas as pd
import os

os.chdir("../data_folder")
df = pd.read_csv("data.csv")

For Windows users:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv(r"C:\data_folder\data.csv")

The prefix r in location above saves time when giving the location to the pandas Dataframe.

You could use the __file__ attribute:

import os
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "../data_folder/data.csv"))

Keeping things tidy with f-strings:

import os
import pandas as pd

data_files = '../data_folder/'
csv_name = 'data.csv'

pd.read_csv(f"{data_files}{csv_name}")