An example project demonstrating how to access data files in Python package
This project shows how to package data files within a Python distribution, and has some example code for reading the data files. To build this distribution, create a venv with build_ installed and then execute
.. code-block:: bash
python -m build
The distributions (an sdist .tar.gz and a bdist .whl) will be written to ./dist/ subdirectory. To test it out, install the distribution and run the console script resources-example
.
Here's a compatibility summary of the five approaches demonstrated:
+-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+ | Module | Description | In stdlib? | Works on Py2? | Works on Py3? | Works in zipfile? | Run as script?* | +=============+=======================+============+===============+===============+===================+=================+ | example1.py | os.path.join | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | +-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+ | example2.py | pkgutil | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | +-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+ | example3.py | pkg_resources | no | yes | deprecated | yes | yes | +-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+ | example4.py | importlib.resources. | deprecated | no | yes (3.7+) | yes | yes | | | read_binary/read_text | | | | | | +-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+ | example5.py | importlib.resources. | yes (3.9+) | yes | yes | yes | yes | | | files | | | | | | +-------------+-----------------------+------------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+-----------------+
* "Run as script" means executing the submodule directly, e.g. python myapp/example2.py
. Note that Guido considers this an anti-pattern <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2007-April/006793.html>
_
If you are interested in creating an executable zip from source, you can use stdlib zipapp <https://docs.python.org/3/library/zipapp.html>
_ utility (Python 3.5+):
.. code-block:: bash
python3 -m zipapp --compress /path/to/resources-example --main="myapp:main" --output=myapp.zip
If this command is slow or the .zip is surprisingly large, make sure don't have any stray subdirs in the source path beforehand (e.g. .venv
, .git
, .idea
).
Now you can run the zip directly with the interpreter (any Python version):
.. code-block:: bash
python myapp.zip
.. _build: https://pypi.org/project/build/