How to access files inside a Python egg file?

Question

This might be a weird requirement but it's what I've run into. I Googled but yield nothing.

I'm coding an application who's using a lot of constant attributes / values recorded in an XML file (they'll not change so a static file), things work fine until I generated an egg file for it.

When the logic reaches the XML accessing part, I got one complaint like this: /home/Workspace/my_proj/dist/mps-1.2.0_M2-py2.6.egg/mps/par/client/syntax/syntax.xml

Actually I've bundled the XML file in the path above but seems Python doesn't know how to access it.

The code to access the XML is as...

file_handler = open(path_to_the_file)
lines = file_handler.read().splitlines()

Any idea?

If you've still got this problem, check my answer here as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12735852/accessing-files-in-python-egg-from-inside-the-egg/13126365 — Alan Franzoni, May 08 '18 at 14:44

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 07 '10 at 02:23

21

egg files are zipfiles, so you must access "stuff" inside them with the zipfile module of the Python standard libraries, not with the built-in open function!

answered Sep 07 '10 at 02:23

Alex Martelli

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I read the doc for zipfile module and surely it could do the job. Thank you ~ – Ripley Sep 07 '10 at 02:36
you can even install them using, sudo easy_install your_eggfile – shahjapan Sep 07 '10 at 07:19

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 25 '17 at 05:06

If you want to access the contents inside the .egg file you can simply rename it and change extension from .egg to .zip and than unzip it. Which will create a folder and the contents will be same as they were when it was a .egg file

for example brewer2mpl-1.4.1-py3.6.egg
After Renaming brewer2mpl-1.4.1-py3.6.zip

Now if we open it, it'll get easily unzipped and the content will be put in a folder with same name in the same directory. (tested on macOS Sierra)

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 08 '21 at 09:48

2

The less command on *nix systems can peek inside zip files. Therefore less some.egg will list the contents of a .egg file too.

answered Jan 08 '21 at 09:48

shark8me

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 01 '21 at 15:31

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Just run unzip file.egg

You can install unzip on Debian/Ubuntu with

sudo apt install unzip

or on macOS by installing Homebrew then

brew install unzip

edited Sep 01 '21 at 15:31

Boris Verkhovskiy

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answered Feb 23 '18 at 11:45

Jorge Machado

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 23 '18 at 07:50

Access file from inside egg file

Yes, It is possible to read the files from inside egg file.

Egg file: mps-1.2.0_M2-py2.6.egg structure for module level example:

In driverfile.py:

import xml.etree.ElementTree
import mps.par.client as syntaxpath
import os
path = os.path.dirname(syntaxpath.__file__)
element = xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(path+'\\syntax\\syntax.xml').getroot()
print(element)

Read xml file from inside an eggfile:

PYTHONPATH=mps-1.2.0_M2-py2.6.egg python driverfile.py

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 26 '19 at 03:06

0

i think by default eggs packing file under python won't add your xml inside to the pack

answered Apr 26 '19 at 03:06

Rocky Chen

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How to access files inside a Python egg file?

6 Answers6

Access file from inside egg file

Read xml file from inside an eggfile:

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