How to return the modified date for specific file types within a path in Python?-CodePudding

I have a file path that I need to return the list of file names in it the last modified date each file in Python. I am able to do this except the problem is that I only want to do this for PDFs and there are multiples file types within the folder I'm working with. I have gotten to the point where I can get the file name and the modified date but run into an error when I try to put in the PDF only stipulation.

The below is what I have so far:

path = <insert path>

def ts_to_dt(ts):
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts)

for file in os.scandir(path):
    #if file.endswith(".pdf"):
     print(file.name, ts_to_dt(file.stat().st_atime))

When I try to execute with the line that is commented out (if file.endswith(".pdf")), I get this error:

if file.endswith(".pdf"):
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'nt.DirEntry' object has no attribute 'endswith'

I'm new to Python so any help would be appreciated!

CodePudding user response：

os.scandir returns an iterator of os.DirEntry objects as you can see from the error message.

os.DirEntry have different properties that you can get, including a name property which is a String.

So you could do:

if file.name.endswith(".pdf"):
   ...

CodePudding user response：

I would recommend using pathlib for this instead.

You can do something like this:

from pathlib import Path

def print_access_times(path):
    path = Path(path)  # If path was either a str or Path object, this will work
    for file in path.iterdir():
        if file.suffix == '.pdf':
            print(file.name, ts_to_dt(file.stat().st_atime))

The problem with your code was that os.scandir yields DirEntry objects (which don't have a endswith method), not strings. The Path objects from pathlib provide a more consistent interface for working with paths in Python.

You could have used file.name.endswith('.pdf') with the os.scandir solution instead.

To convert a Path object back into a string, you would use file.as_posix() or str(file).

If you're not sure ahead of time whether the given path is a directory or not, then you can use the following to gracefully handle the error that would be raised:

def print_access_times(path):
    path = Path(path)  # If path was either a str or Path object, this will work
    try:
        for file in path.iterdir():
            if file.suffix == '.pdf':
                print(file.name, ts_to_dt(file.stat().st_atime))
    except NotADirectoryError:
        pass