Unzip to temp (in-memory) directory using Python mkdtemp()?

Question

I've looked through the examples out there and don't seem to find one that fits.

Looking to unzip a file in-memory to a temporary directory using Python mkdtemp().

Something like this feels intuitive, but I can't find the correct syntax:

import zipfile
import tempfile


zf = zipfile.Zipfile('incoming.zip')

with tempfile.mkdtemp() as tempdir:
    zf.extractall(tempdir)

# do stuff on extracted files

But this results in:

AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-5-af39c866a2ba> in <module>
      1 zip_file = zipfile.ZipFile('incoming.zip')
      2 
----> 3 with tempfile.mkdtemp() as tempdir:
      4     zip_file.extractall(tempdir)

AttributeError: __enter__

Joaniejoann

You can't use .mkdtemp() with with and as. It returns the path name as a string and not a context manager. Read this -> Python: Why am I receiving an AttributeError: __enter__ – Incautious

mkdtemp() does not return a context manager. It returns a path. You have to handle it manually. And it also does not work in-memory except your temp directory is on a RAM drive. – Evocation

You're looking for tempfile.TemporaryDirectory I reckon as it comes with context manager. But really depending on what you are trying to do, there is a good chance you do not need to unpack the zip first in order to do that. – Kitchenware

Answer 1

I already mentioned in my comment why the code that you wrote doesn't work. .mkdtemp() returns just a path as a string, but what you really want to have is a context manager.

You can easily fix that by using the the correct function .TemporaryDirectory()

This function securely creates a temporary directory using the same rules as mkdtemp(). The resulting object can be used as a context manager (see Examples). On completion of the context or destruction of the temporary directory object the newly created temporary directory and all its contents are removed from the filesystem.

---

zf = zipfile.ZipFile('incoming.zip')

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tempdir:
    zf.extractall(tempdir)

This alone would work

Paranoiac

I was close! Thank you for getting me past that. I now have more understanding (and homework to do). – Joaniejoann