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.. image:: https://secure.travis-ci.org/ActiveState/appdirs.png
:target: https://travis-ci.org/ActiveState/appdirs
Note: This project has been officially deprecated. You may want to check out https://pypi.org/project/platformdirs/ which is a more active fork of appdirs. Thanks to everyone who has used appdirs. Shout out to ActiveState for the time they gave their employees to work on this over the years.
the problem
===========
What directory should your app use for storing user data? If running on macOS, you
should use::
~/Library/Application Support/<AppName>
If on Windows (at least English Win XP) that should be::
C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Local Settings\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>
or possibly::
C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>
for `roaming profiles <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-vista/cc766489(v=ws.10)>`_ but that is another story.
On Linux (and other Unices) the dir, according to the `XDG
spec <https://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html>`_, is::
~/.local/share/<AppName>
``appdirs`` to the rescue
=========================
This kind of thing is what the ``appdirs`` module is for. ``appdirs`` will
help you choose an appropriate:
- user data dir (``user_data_dir``)
- user config dir (``user_config_dir``)
- user cache dir (``user_cache_dir``)
- site data dir (``site_data_dir``)
- site config dir (``site_config_dir``)
- user log dir (``user_log_dir``)
and also:
- is a single module so other Python packages can include their own private copy
- is slightly opinionated on the directory names used. Look for "OPINION" in
documentation and code for when an opinion is being applied.
some example output
===================
On macOS::
>>> from appdirs import *
>>> appname = "SuperApp"
>>> appauthor = "Acme"
>>> user_data_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/Users/trentm/Library/Application Support/SuperApp'
>>> site_data_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/Library/Application Support/SuperApp'
>>> user_cache_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/Users/trentm/Library/Caches/SuperApp'
>>> user_log_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/Users/trentm/Library/Logs/SuperApp'
On Windows 7::
>>> from appdirs import *
>>> appname = "SuperApp"
>>> appauthor = "Acme"
>>> user_data_dir(appname, appauthor)
'C:\\Users\\trentm\\AppData\\Local\\Acme\\SuperApp'
>>> user_data_dir(appname, appauthor, roaming=True)
'C:\\Users\\trentm\\AppData\\Roaming\\Acme\\SuperApp'
>>> user_cache_dir(appname, appauthor)
'C:\\Users\\trentm\\AppData\\Local\\Acme\\SuperApp\\Cache'
>>> user_log_dir(appname, appauthor)
'C:\\Users\\trentm\\AppData\\Local\\Acme\\SuperApp\\Logs'
On Linux::
>>> from appdirs import *
>>> appname = "SuperApp"
>>> appauthor = "Acme"
>>> user_data_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/home/trentm/.local/share/SuperApp
>>> site_data_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/usr/local/share/SuperApp'
>>> site_data_dir(appname, appauthor, multipath=True)
'/usr/local/share/SuperApp:/usr/share/SuperApp'
>>> user_cache_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/home/trentm/.cache/SuperApp'
>>> user_log_dir(appname, appauthor)
'/home/trentm/.cache/SuperApp/log'
>>> user_config_dir(appname)
'/home/trentm/.config/SuperApp'
>>> site_config_dir(appname)
'/etc/xdg/SuperApp'
>>> os.environ['XDG_CONFIG_DIRS'] = '/etc:/usr/local/etc'
>>> site_config_dir(appname, multipath=True)
'/etc/SuperApp:/usr/local/etc/SuperApp'
``AppDirs`` for convenience
===========================
::
>>> from appdirs import AppDirs
>>> dirs = AppDirs("SuperApp", "Acme")
>>> dirs.user_data_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Application Support/SuperApp'
>>> dirs.site_data_dir
'/Library/Application Support/SuperApp'
>>> dirs.user_cache_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Caches/SuperApp'
>>> dirs.user_log_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Logs/SuperApp'
Per-version isolation
=====================
If you have multiple versions of your app in use that you want to be
able to run side-by-side, then you may want version-isolation for these
dirs::
>>> from appdirs import AppDirs
>>> dirs = AppDirs("SuperApp", "Acme", version="1.0")
>>> dirs.user_data_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Application Support/SuperApp/1.0'
>>> dirs.site_data_dir
'/Library/Application Support/SuperApp/1.0'
>>> dirs.user_cache_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Caches/SuperApp/1.0'
>>> dirs.user_log_dir
'/Users/trentm/Library/Logs/SuperApp/1.0'
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