🔭Explore file System with Flask 📁

Flask is a microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions. And before you ask: It’s BSD licensed[1]

Jinja2 is just a templating language, means we can keep HTML templates to reuse then and by using its features we can iterate the objects and parse data in HTML. If you want to know about opensource licenses please check out here

So we can create APIs and by using Jinja2 we can create web pages too, But for now, just focus on Flask APIs.

Installed flask?

If yes skip to next else here is the command

pip install flask

and now you are ready to go.

Writing first Hello World api

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def hello():
    return "Hello World!"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

Here @app.route("/") is defining a path on which the below method hello will be called. We are running app in debug mode so after running program a temporary HTTP server will be created and as you go on changing the code the server will auto-detect the changes and restart itself.

To get the output hit the API call using curl and get a response in JSON, You can use any approach for API call, either from a browser or Postman.

In flask GET method is by default for any function but we can specify other if we need

$ curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X GET http://localhost:5000/

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 12
Server: Werkzeug/0.15.4 Python/3.7.2
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2019 12:40:21 GMT

Hello World!

API responses can of two types either XML or JSON, Here we are expecting a JSON as we have mentioned in the curl command.

So now let’s move to create the actual File System API. Following libraries will be used for the same

• Flask
• os
• errno

Writing just a path API

This path API will take an argument of the filename from the route and return it. In further steps we’ll be processing the path :simple_smile:

• Adding parameters in route
  • We can pass parameters in routes such as /file/<filename> where filename will be considered as an argument to below function.
  • Here we’ll be passing the path of the file so /files/<path:path>, here <path:path> the first one is datatype and the <path:path> is a variable name.

#!flask/bin/python
from flask import Flask,jsonify
import os
import errno

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/files/<path:path>')
def index(path):
	return jsonify(path)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

This API will take input from the route and returns it.

Create a modal that will represent the data

hierarchy = {
        'type': 'folder',     # type of file (folder/file)
        'name': os.path.basename(path),   # name of file with extension
        'path': path,
    }

Using recursion for nested files

For now ignore the recursoin, it’ll be clear later. If you don’t know what it’s checkout

def path_hierarchy(path):
    path_hierarchy(os.path.join(path, contents))

Complete Source code

#!flask/bin/python
from flask import Flask,jsonify
import os
import errno

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/files/<path:path>')
def index(path):
    response = path_hierarchy(path,True)
    return jsonify(response)

def path_hierarchy(path,flag):
    hierarchy = {
        'type': 'folder',
        'name': os.path.basename(path),
        'path': path,
    }
    if flag:
        try:
            hierarchy['children'] = [
                path_hierarchy(os.path.join(path, contents),False)
                for contents in os.listdir(path)
            ]
        except OSError as e:
            if e.errno != errno.ENOTDIR:
                raise
            hierarchy['type'] = 'file'

    return hierarchy


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

Output

Hit the following URL http://127.0.0.1:5000/files/c:/

the output will be similar to the following one.

{
  "children": [
    {
      "name": "$Recycle.Bin",
      "path": "c:/$Recycle.Bin",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "PerfLogs",
      "path": "c:/PerfLogs",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "Program Files",
      "path": "c:/Program Files",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "Program Files (x86)",
      "path": "c:/Program Files (x86)",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "ProgramData",
      "path": "c:/ProgramData",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "System Volume Information",
      "path": "c:/System Volume Information",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "Users",
      "path": "c:/Users",
      "type": "folder"
    },
    {
      "name": "Windows",
      "path": "c:/Windows",
      "type": "folder"
    }
  ],
  "name": "",
  "path": "c:/",
  "type": "folder"
}