Temporary file with specific file extension in Python 3

Question

I am writing some unit tests for a piece of code that takes a path and attempts to load the file if it has a known extension, then does more careful checking.

In the unit test, I would like to create a temporary file that has the correct extension, but incorrect contents, in my case an empty file posing as test.tif.

How can I create a temporary file while specifying the extension (or the entire name), using the tempfile module?

I have looked at the NamedTemporaryFile class, as well as the suffix and prefix parameters, but I still cannot set the extension. I suppose I could manually create a file in a temporary directory, but then I loose the self-deleting capability that I am after.

score 101 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 11 '16 at 15:16

101

This doesn't work for you?

In [2]: tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix='.tif').name
Out[2]: '/var/folders/gq/swc6jtld5853skyq_xc2lpc40000gn/T/tmplrtwvxg7.tif'

answered Aug 11 '16 at 15:16

Wayne Werner

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It does. Feeling rather silly now. I voted to close the question as a typo / unreproducable error. – Benjamin Aug 11 '16 at 15:29
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Well, it helped me find what I needed. – Konstantin Schubert Dec 26 '22 at 21:55

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 05 '20 at 11:16

2

did you try?

fd, path =tempfile.mkstemp(suffix = '.tif')
print(path)

answered Dec 05 '20 at 11:16

ismail

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Please try to add some explanation about the code. – ppwater Dec 05 '20 at 12:25

Temporary file with specific file extension in Python 3

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