Getting Started¶
PyFilesystem is a Python-only module and can be installed with easy_install or from source. PyFilesystem is known to work on Linux, Mac and OSX.
Installing¶
The easiest way to install PyFilesystem is with easy_install:
easy_install fs
Add the -U switch if you want to upgrade a previous installation:
easy_install -U fs
If you prefer to use Pip (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip) to install Python packages, the procedure is much the same:
pip install fs
Or to upgrade:
pip install fs --upgrade
You can also install the cutting edge release by checking out the source via SVN:
svn checkout http://pyfilesystem.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ pyfilesystem-read-only
cd pyfilesystem-read-only
python setup.py install
Whichever method you use, you should now have the fs module on your path (version number may vary):
>>> import fs
>>> fs.__version__
'0.4.0'
Prerequisites¶
PyFilesystem requires at least Python 2.5. There are a few other dependencies if you want to use some of the more advanced filesystem interfaces, but for basic use all that is needed is the Python standard library.
- Boto (required for fs.s3fs) http://code.google.com/p/boto/
- Paramiko (required for fs.ftpfs.FTPFS) http://www.lag.net/paramiko/
- wxPython (required for fs.browsewin) http://www.wxpython.org/
Quick Examples¶
Before you dive in to the API documentation, here are a few interesting things you can do with PyFilesystem.
The following will list all the files in your home directory:
>>> from fs.osfs import OSFS
>>> home_fs = OSFS('~/') # 'c:\Users\<login name>' on Windows
>>> home_fs.listdir()
Here’s how to browse your home folder with a graphical interface:
>>> home_fs.browse()
This will display the total number of bytes store in ‘.py’ files your home directory:
>>> sum(home_fs.getsize(f) for f in home_fs.walkfiles(wildcard='*.py'))