Python: How do I make temporary files in my test suite?

Question

(I'm using Python 2.6 and nose.)

I'm writing tests for my Python app. I want one test to open a new file, close it, and then delete it. Naturally, I prefer that this will happen inside a temporary directory, because I don't want to trash the user's filesystem. And, it needs to be cross-OS.

How do I do it?

Answer 1

See the tempfile module in the standard library

Here are the examples of using TemporaryFile and TemporaryDirectory as context managers:

with tempfile.TemporaryFile() as fp:
    fp.write(b'Hello world!')
    fp.seek(0)
    fp.read()

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmpdirname:
    print('created temporary directory', tmpdirname)