Writing to a file

Question

def loadSubredditConfig (self):
    self.builder.get_object ('cbxR').remove_all ()
    path = os.path.join (xdg.BaseDirectory.xdg_config_home, 'RedThat', 'subreddits')

    if (os.path.exists (path)):
        file = open (path, 'r+')
        for line in file.readLines ():
            self.builder.get_object ('cbxR').append_text (line.strip ().replace (' ', ''))
    else:
        file = open (path, 'w') # Problem here
        file.write ('')
        self.builder.get_object ('cbxR').append_text ('')

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bin/gtkreddit", line 33, in <module>
    gtkreddit.main()
  File "/home/robin/Ubuntu One/Python/gtkreddit/gtkreddit/__init__.py", line 33, in main
    window = GtkredditWindow.GtkredditWindow()
  File "/home/robin/Ubuntu One/Python/gtkreddit/gtkreddit_lib/Window.py", line 35, in __new__
    new_object.finish_initializing(builder)
  File "/home/robin/Ubuntu One/Python/gtkreddit/gtkreddit/GtkredditWindow.py", line 63, in finish_initializing
    self.loadSubredditConfig ()
  File "/home/robin/Ubuntu One/Python/gtkreddit/gtkreddit/GtkredditWindow.py", line 236, in loadSubredditConfig
    file = open (path, 'w')
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/robin/.config/RedThat/subreddits'

I want the file to be created.
Tried w, a, rw, w+, a+. All throw the same error.

Answer 1

Make sure the directory /home/robin/.config/RedThat/ exists before trying to create a file in it.

Answer 2

You need to ensure all the parent directories exist, to the path of where you want to create a file. You can use os.makedirs to accomplish this. You also should probably avoid using xdg.BaseDirectory as python-xdg isn't really maintained any more upstream. You can use dirspec.basedir instead, which is the python-dirspec package in Ubuntu.