Find system folder locations in Python

Question

I am trying to find out the location of system folders with Python 3.1. For example "My Documents" = "C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents", "Program Files" = "C:\Program Files" etc etc.

Larrigan

Answer 1

I found a slightly different way of doing it. This way will give you the location of various system folders and uses real words instead of CLSIDs.

import win32com.client
objShell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
allUserDocs = objShell.SpecialFolders("AllUsersDesktop")
print allUserDocs

Other available folders: AllUsersDesktop, AllUsersStartMenu, AllUsersPrograms, AllUsersStartup, Desktop, Favorites, Fonts, MyDocuments, NetHood, PrintHood, Recent, SendTo, StartMenu, Startup & Templates

Larrigan

Is this library documented anywhere? The SourceForge site is just a maze of banner ads and empty wikis. I'm looking for the Program Files directory (or, at least, that's what it used to be called under Windows... thankfully I haven't had to deal with Windows in a very long time). 'AllUsersPrograms' seems to return the path to 'Programs' under the Start menu (which is interesting, since I'm not sure I've even found the Start menu in Windows Server 2012!) – Salgado

@MIchael Scheper I'm afraid I haven't touched it since I asked this question and SourceForge has gone severely downhill since then. Maybe try inspecting objShell and seeing if there's a method to view all SpecialFolder names? – Larrigan

Thanks. What I've found so far is aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePython/2.4/pywin32/… and, more generally, aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePython/2.4/pywin32/…, and a comment that reads 'Pywin32 is bound so closely to the win32 calls that you can basically just look on MSDN and use the syntax there in Python, for the most part.' I haven't verified this myself yet, but maybe this will help put other SOers on the right track. – Salgado

@MichaelScheper the most accessible/understandable reference I've found is SS64 - ss64.com/vb/special.html, which in turn reference their sources for the full details – Dyslogistic

Answer 2

In Windows 7 I can use the following environment variables to access the folders I need:

>>> import os
>>> os.environ['USERPROFILE']
'C:\\Users\\digginc'
>>> os.environ['PROGRAMFILES']
'C:\\Program Files'

Detonator

I'm on 7 at the moment and this works nicely. Do you know how reliable this is for cross-platform use? The documentation isn't much help. Thanks. – Larrigan

I don't know unfortunately Mr. Chimp, sorry. – Detonator

@Mr_Chimp: not cross-platform at all, these are environmental variables set in Windows only. – Haller

Answer 3

To get the "My Documents" folder, you can use:

from win32com.shell import shell
df = shell.SHGetDesktopFolder()
pidl = df.ParseDisplayName(0, None,  
    "::{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103}")[1]
mydocs = shell.SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl)
print mydocs

From here.

I'm not sure what the equivalent magic incantation is for "Program Files", but that should hopefully be enough to get you started.

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In Python <3, yeah. In Python 3.1: >>> from win32com.shell import shell Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module> from win32com.shell import shell ImportError: No module named win32com.shell – Larrigan

Is win32com installed? There are versions available for Python 3.1 (see sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files) – Advertisement

Answer 4

The Windows API call for doing this, from Vista on, is SHGetKnownFolderPath. There is an MIT-licensed wrapper (using ctypes, so no dependencies on pywin32) here.

>>> from knownpaths import *
>>> get_path(FOLDERID.ProgramFilesX86)
u'C:\\Program Files (x86)'

Satisfied

hah! If I'd paid attention to this not-voted-on post a couple hours ago I wouldn't have written my own. +5 if I could. – Dyslogistic

Answer 5

Here's an alternative win32com approach because WScript.Shell "special folders do not work in all language locales, a preferred method is to query the value from User Shell folders" (ref):

>>> ID = 48
>>> shapp = win32com.client.Dispatch("Shell.Application")
>>> shapp.namespace(ID).self.path
'C:\\Users\\mattw\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Administrative Tools'

The ID number comes from MSDN ShellSpecialFolderConstants Enumeration. I converted that list to csv for easy use and wrote a short python script demoing that, gist here.

Special thanks to Mr Chimp for starting this off. I relied heavily on his answer and references to get started.

Dyslogistic