Create folder structure based on a datetime list

Question

I have a list of date in datetime format. This list has a range date between datetime(2018, 1, 1) to datetime(2020, 12, 31).

I iterate through this list using the following code:

 for day in days:
       # code snippet to get data from each day

My doubt is: How can use os.mkdir() inside my loop to create a folder structure like below

    data
       2018
          Jan
            2018-01-01.csv
            2018-01-02.csv
            ...
          Feb
            2018-02-01.csv
            2018-02-02.csv
            ...
          ...
          ...
      2019
         Jan
           ...
         Feb
           ...
         ...
      2020
         Jan
            ...
         Feb
            ...
         ...

Talon · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-01 23:56:27Z

1

You can create multiple folders with os.makedirs, it also can ignore if that folder already exists.

for day in days:
    path = day.strftime("%Y/%b")
    os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)
    # write your file to path/filename

Or for example:

for day in days:
    path = day.strftime(os.path.join("%Y", "%b", "%Y-%m-%d.csv"))
    os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(path), exist_ok=True)
    with open(path, "w") as file:
        file.write("Your Data Here")

Possible placeholders for strftime can be found on this handy site. You might find it useful to change the intermediate folder names, as the month names won't work particularily well with alphabetical order, so you might want to change that to %m %b such that the preceding number allows for better sorting.

edited Mar 1, 2022 at 23:56

answered Mar 1, 2022 at 23:50

Talon

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4 Comments

OdiumPura Over a year ago

Awsome solution! A last doubt, if I want to write a pandas dataframe with to_csv method,this method should be call inside with open(path, "w") as file?

Talon Over a year ago

@OdiumPura the to_csv can directly accept a path and write to it, in that case you can omit the with-block and directly go for your_df.to_csv(path) (Following pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/…)

OdiumPura Over a year ago

I'm getting permission error - denied access when I try to write file to path using df.to_csv(path). But the folder structure works correctly!

OdiumPura Over a year ago

I used df.to_csv(path + "/" + filename). Now it's working correctly!

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