Powerful Python library for atomic file writes.
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Atomic file writes.
.. code-block:: python
from atomicwrites import atomic_writewith atomic_write('foo.txt', overwrite=True) as f: f.write('Hello world.') # "foo.txt" doesn't exist yet.
Now it does.
See
API documentation_ for more low-level interfaces.
Features that distinguish it from other similar libraries (see
Alternatives and Credit_):
Race-free assertion that the target file doesn't yet exist. This can be controlled with the
overwriteparameter.
Windows support, although not well-tested. The MSDN resources are not very explicit about which operations are atomic. I'm basing my assumptions off
a comment_ by
Doug Crook_, who appears to be a Microsoft employee:
Question: Is MoveFileEx atomic if the existing and new files are both on the same drive?
The simple answer is "usually, but in some cases it will silently fall-back to a non-atomic method, so don't count on it".
The implementation of MoveFileEx looks something like this: [...]
The problem is if the rename fails, you might end up with a CopyFile, which is definitely not atomic.
If you really need atomic-or-nothing, you can try calling NtSetInformationFile, which is unsupported but is much more likely to be atomic.
Simple high-level API that wraps a very flexible class-based API.
Consistent error handling across platforms.
It uses a temporary file in the same directory as the given path. This ensures that the temporary file resides on the same filesystem.
The temporary file will then be atomically moved to the target location: On POSIX, it will use
renameif files should be overwritten, otherwise a combination of
linkand
unlink. On Windows, it uses MoveFileEx_ through stdlib's
ctypeswith the appropriate flags.
Note that with
linkand
unlink, there's a timewindow where the file might be available under two entries in the filesystem: The name of the temporary file, and the name of the target file.
Also note that the permissions of the target file may change this way. In some situations a
chmodcan be issued without any concurrency problems, but since that is not always the case, this library doesn't do it by itself.
.. _MoveFileEx: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365240%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
On POSIX,
fsyncis invoked on the temporary file after it is written (to flush file content and metadata), and on the parent directory after the file is moved (to flush filename).
fsyncdoes not take care of disks' internal buffers, but there don't seem to be any standard POSIX APIs for that. On OS X,
fcntlis used with
F_FULLFSYNCinstead of
fsyncfor that reason.
On Windows,
_commit_ is used, but there are no guarantees about disk internal buffers.
Atomicwrites is directly inspired by the following libraries (and shares a minimal amount of code):
The Trac project's
utility functions, also used in
Werkzeugand
mitsuhiko/python-atomicfile_. The idea to use
ctypesinstead of
PyWin32originated there.
abarnert/fatomic_. Windows support (based on
PyWin32) was originally taken from there.
Other alternatives to atomicwrites include:
sashka/atomicfile_. Originally I considered using that, but at the time it was lacking a lot of features I needed (Windows support, overwrite-parameter, overriding behavior through subclassing).
The
Boltons library collection_ features a class for atomic file writes, which seems to have a very similar
overwriteparameter. It is lacking Windows support though.
Licensed under the MIT, see
LICENSE.