Gets an output stream for appending data to the file. If the file doesn't already exist it is created.
Asynchronously opens file for appending.
Finishes an asynchronous file append operation started with gio.file.File.appendToAsync.
Prepares the file attribute query string for copying to file.
Copies the file source to the location specified by destination. Can not handle recursive copies of directories.
Copies the file source to the location specified by destination asynchronously. For details of the behaviour, see gio.file.File.copy.
Copies the file attributes from source to destination.
Finishes copying the file started with gio.file.File.copyAsync.
Creates a new file and returns an output stream for writing to it. The file must not already exist.
Asynchronously creates a new file and returns an output stream for writing to it. The file must not already exist.
Finishes an asynchronous file create operation started with gio.file.File.createAsync.
Creates a new file and returns a stream for reading and writing to it. The file must not already exist.
Asynchronously creates a new file and returns a stream for reading and writing to it. The file must not already exist.
Finishes an asynchronous file create operation started with gio.file.File.createReadwriteAsync.
Asynchronously delete a file. If the file is a directory, it will only be deleted if it is empty. This has the same semantics as glib.global.unlink.
Finishes deleting a file started with gio.file.File.deleteAsync.
Deletes a file. If the file is a directory, it will only be deleted if it is empty. This has the same semantics as glib.global.unlink.
Duplicates a #GFile handle. This operation does not duplicate the actual file or directory represented by the #GFile; see gio.file.File.copy if attempting to copy a file.
Starts an asynchronous eject on a mountable. When this operation has completed, callback will be called with user_user data, and the operation can be finalized with gio.file.File.ejectMountableFinish.
Finishes an asynchronous eject operation started by gio.file.File.ejectMountable.
Starts an asynchronous eject on a mountable. When this operation has completed, callback will be called with user_user data, and the operation can be finalized with gio.file.File.ejectMountableWithOperationFinish.
Finishes an asynchronous eject operation started by gio.file.File.ejectMountableWithOperation.
Gets the requested information about the files in a directory. The result is a #GFileEnumerator object that will give out #GFileInfo objects for all the files in the directory.
Asynchronously gets the requested information about the files in a directory. The result is a #GFileEnumerator object that will give out #GFileInfo objects for all the files in the directory.
Finishes an async enumerate children operation. See gio.file.File.enumerateChildrenAsync.
Checks if the two given #GFiles refer to the same file.
Gets a #GMount for the #GFile.
Asynchronously gets the mount for the file.
Finishes an asynchronous find mount request. See gio.file.File.findEnclosingMountAsync.
Gets the base name (the last component of the path) for a given #GFile.
Gets a child of file with basename equal to name.
Gets the child of file for a given display_name (i.e. a UTF-8 version of the name). If this function fails, it returns null and error will be set. This is very useful when constructing a #GFile for a new file and the user entered the filename in the user interface, for instance when you select a directory and type a filename in the file selector.
Gets the parent directory for the file. If the file represents the root directory of the file system, then null will be returned.
Gets the parse name of the file. A parse name is a UTF-8 string that describes the file such that one can get the #GFile back using gio.file.File.parseName.
Gets the local pathname for #GFile, if one exists. If non-null, this is guaranteed to be an absolute, canonical path. It might contain symlinks.
Gets the path for descendant relative to parent.
Gets the URI for the file.
Gets the URI scheme for a #GFile. RFC 3986 decodes the scheme as:
Checks if file has a parent, and optionally, if it is parent.
Checks whether file has the prefix specified by prefix.
Checks to see if a #GFile has a given URI scheme.
Creates a hash value for a #GFile.
Checks to see if a file is native to the platform.
Loads the contents of file and returns it as #GBytes.
Asynchronously loads the contents of file as #GBytes.
Completes an asynchronous request to gio.file.File.loadBytesAsync.
Loads the content of the file into memory. The data is always zero-terminated, but this is not included in the resultant length. The returned contents should be freed with glib.global.gfree when no longer needed.
Starts an asynchronous load of the file's contents.
Finishes an asynchronous load of the file's contents. The contents are placed in contents, and length is set to the size of the contents string. The contents should be freed with glib.global.gfree when no longer needed. If etag_out is present, it will be set to the new entity tag for the file.
Finishes an asynchronous partial load operation that was started with gio.file.File.loadPartialContentsAsync. The data is always zero-terminated, but this is not included in the resultant length. The returned contents should be freed with glib.global.gfree when no longer needed.
Creates a directory. Note that this will only create a child directory of the immediate parent directory of the path or URI given by the #GFile. To recursively create directories, see gio.file.File.makeDirectoryWithParents. This function will fail if the parent directory does not exist, setting error to gio.types.IOErrorEnum.NotFound. If the file system doesn't support creating directories, this function will fail, setting error to gio.types.IOErrorEnum.NotSupported.
Asynchronously creates a directory.
Finishes an asynchronous directory creation, started with gio.file.File.makeDirectoryAsync.
Creates a directory and any parent directories that may not exist similar to 'mkdir -p'. If the file system does not support creating directories, this function will fail, setting error to gio.types.IOErrorEnum.NotSupported. If the directory itself already exists, this function will fail setting error to gio.types.IOErrorEnum.Exists, unlike the similar glib.global.mkdirWithParents.
Creates a symbolic link named file which contains the string symlink_value.
Asynchronously creates a symbolic link named file which contains the string symlink_value.
Finishes an asynchronous symbolic link creation, started with gio.file.File.makeSymbolicLinkAsync.
Recursively measures the disk usage of file.
Collects the results from an earlier call to gio.file.File.measureDiskUsageAsync. See gio.file.File.measureDiskUsage for more information.
Obtains a file or directory monitor for the given file, depending on the type of the file.
Obtains a directory monitor for the given file. This may fail if directory monitoring is not supported.
Obtains a file monitor for the given file. If no file notification mechanism exists, then regular polling of the file is used.
Starts a mount_operation, mounting the volume that contains the file location.
Finishes a mount operation started by gio.file.File.mountEnclosingVolume.
Mounts a file of type G_FILE_TYPE_MOUNTABLE. Using mount_operation, you can request callbacks when, for instance, passwords are needed during authentication.
Finishes a mount operation. See gio.file.File.mountMountable for details.
Tries to move the file or directory source to the location specified by destination. If native move operations are supported then this is used, otherwise a copy + delete fallback is used. The native implementation may support moving directories (for instance on moves inside the same filesystem), but the fallback code does not.
Asynchronously moves a file source to the location of destination. For details of the behaviour, see gio.file.File.move.
Finishes an asynchronous file movement, started with gio.file.File.moveAsync.
Opens an existing file for reading and writing. The result is a #GFileIOStream that can be used to read and write the contents of the file.
Asynchronously opens file for reading and writing.
Finishes an asynchronous file read operation started with gio.file.File.openReadwriteAsync.
Exactly like gio.file.File.getPath, but caches the result via gobject.object.ObjectG.setQdataFull. This is useful for example in C applications which mix g_file_* APIs with native ones. It also avoids an extra duplicated string when possible, so will be generally more efficient.
Polls a file of type gio.types.FileType.Mountable.
Finishes a poll operation. See gio.file.File.pollMountable for details.
Returns the #GAppInfo that is registered as the default application to handle the file specified by file.
Async version of gio.file.File.queryDefaultHandler.
Finishes a gio.file.File.queryDefaultHandlerAsync operation.
Utility function to check if a particular file exists. This is implemented using gio.file.File.queryInfo and as such does blocking I/O.
Utility function to inspect the #GFileType of a file. This is implemented using gio.file.File.queryInfo and as such does blocking I/O.
Similar to gio.file.File.queryInfo, but obtains information about the filesystem the file is on, rather than the file itself. For instance the amount of space available and the type of the filesystem.
Asynchronously gets the requested information about the filesystem that the specified file is on. The result is a #GFileInfo object that contains key-value attributes (such as type or size for the file).
Finishes an asynchronous filesystem info query. See gio.file.File.queryFilesystemInfoAsync.
Gets the requested information about specified file. The result is a #GFileInfo object that contains key-value attributes (such as the type or size of the file).
Asynchronously gets the requested information about specified file. The result is a #GFileInfo object that contains key-value attributes (such as type or size for the file).
Finishes an asynchronous file info query. See gio.file.File.queryInfoAsync.
Obtain the list of settable attributes for the file.
Obtain the list of attribute namespaces where new attributes can be created by a user. An example of this is extended attributes (in the "xattr" namespace).
Opens a file for reading. The result is a #GFileInputStream that can be used to read the contents of the file.
Asynchronously opens file for reading.
Finishes an asynchronous file read operation started with gio.file.File.readAsync.
Returns an output stream for overwriting the file, possibly creating a backup copy of the file first. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created.
Asynchronously overwrites the file, replacing the contents, possibly creating a backup copy of the file first.
Replaces the contents of file with contents of length bytes.
Starts an asynchronous replacement of file with the given contents of length bytes. etag will replace the document's current entity tag.
Same as gio.file.File.replaceContentsAsync but takes a #GBytes input instead. This function will keep a ref on contents until the operation is done. Unlike gio.file.File.replaceContentsAsync this allows forgetting about the content without waiting for the callback.
Finishes an asynchronous replace of the given file. See gio.file.File.replaceContentsAsync. Sets new_etag to the new entity tag for the document, if present.
Finishes an asynchronous file replace operation started with gio.file.File.replaceAsync.
Returns an output stream for overwriting the file in readwrite mode, possibly creating a backup copy of the file first. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created.
Asynchronously overwrites the file in read-write mode, replacing the contents, possibly creating a backup copy of the file first.
Finishes an asynchronous file replace operation started with gio.file.File.replaceReadwriteAsync.
Resolves a relative path for file to an absolute path.
Sets an attribute in the file with attribute name attribute to value_p.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.ByteString to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail, returning false.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.Int32 to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.Int64 to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.String to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.Uint32 to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail.
Sets attribute of type gio.types.FileAttributeType.Uint64 to value. If attribute is of a different type, this operation will fail.
Asynchronously sets the attributes of file with info.
Finishes setting an attribute started in gio.file.File.setAttributesAsync.
Tries to set all attributes in the #GFileInfo on the target values, not stopping on the first error.
Renames file to the specified display name.
Asynchronously sets the display name for a given #GFile.
Finishes setting a display name started with gio.file.File.setDisplayNameAsync.
Starts a file of type gio.types.FileType.Mountable. Using start_operation, you can request callbacks when, for instance, passwords are needed during authentication.
Finishes a start operation. See gio.file.File.startMountable for details.
Stops a file of type gio.types.FileType.Mountable.
Finishes a stop operation, see gio.file.File.stopMountable for details.
Checks if file supports [thread-default contexts][g-main-context-push-thread-default-context]. If this returns false, you cannot perform asynchronous operations on file in a thread that has a thread-default context.
Sends file to the "Trashcan", if possible. This is similar to deleting it, but the user can recover it before emptying the trashcan. Not all file systems support trashing, so this call can return the gio.types.IOErrorEnum.NotSupported error. Since GLib 2.66, the x-gvfs-notrash unix mount option can be used to disable gio.file.File.trash support for certain mounts, the gio.types.IOErrorEnum.NotSupported error will be returned in that case.
Asynchronously sends file to the Trash location, if possible.
Finishes an asynchronous file trashing operation, started with gio.file.File.trashAsync.
Unmounts a file of type G_FILE_TYPE_MOUNTABLE.
Finishes an unmount operation, see gio.file.File.unmountMountable for details.
Unmounts a file of type gio.types.FileType.Mountable.
Finishes an unmount operation, see gio.file.File.unmountMountableWithOperation for details.
Constructs a #GFile from a vector of elements using the correct separator for filenames.
Creates a #GFile with the given argument from the command line. The value of arg can be either a URI, an absolute path or a relative path resolved relative to the current working directory. This operation never fails, but the returned object might not support any I/O operation if arg points to a malformed path.
Creates a #GFile with the given argument from the command line.
Constructs a #GFile for a given path. This operation never fails, but the returned object might not support any I/O operation if path is malformed.
Constructs a #GFile for a given URI. This operation never fails, but the returned object might not support any I/O operation if uri is malformed or if the uri type is not supported.
Opens a file in the preferred directory for temporary files (as returned by glib.global.getTmpDir) and returns a #GFile and #GFileIOStream pointing to it.
Asynchronously opens a file in the preferred directory for temporary files (as returned by glib.global.getTmpDir) as gio.file.File.newTmp.
Asynchronously creates a directory in the preferred directory for temporary files (as returned by glib.global.getTmpDir) as glib.dir.Dir.makeTmp.
Finishes a temporary directory creation started by gio.file.File.newTmpDirAsync.
Finishes a temporary file creation started by gio.file.File.newTmpAsync.
Constructs a #GFile with the given parse_name (i.e. something given by gio.file.File.getParseName). This operation never fails, but the returned object might not support any I/O operation if the parse_name cannot be parsed.
gio.file.File is a high level abstraction for manipulating files on a virtual file system. gio.file.Files are lightweight, immutable objects that do no I/O upon creation. It is necessary to understand that gio.file.File objects do not represent files, merely an identifier for a file. All file content I/O is implemented as streaming operations (see gio.input_stream.InputStream and gio.output_stream.OutputStream).
To construct a gio.file.File, you can use:
One way to think of a gio.file.File is as an abstraction of a pathname. For normal files the system pathname is what is stored internally, but as gio.file.Files are extensible it could also be something else that corresponds to a pathname in a userspace implementation of a filesystem.
gio.file.Files make up hierarchies of directories and files that correspond to the files on a filesystem. You can move through the file system with gio.file.File using gio.file.File.getParent to get an identifier for the parent directory, gio.file.File.getChild to get a child within a directory, and gio.file.File.resolveRelativePath to resolve a relative path between two gio.file.Files. There can be multiple hierarchies, so you may not end up at the same root if you repeatedly call gio.file.File.getParent on two different files.
All gio.file.Files have a basename (get with gio.file.File.getBasename). These names are byte strings that are used to identify the file on the filesystem (relative to its parent directory) and there is no guarantees that they have any particular charset encoding or even make any sense at all. If you want to use filenames in a user interface you should use the display name that you can get by requesting the G_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_STANDARD_DISPLAY_NAME attribute with gio.file.File.queryInfo. This is guaranteed to be in UTF-8 and can be used in a user interface. But always store the real basename or the gio.file.File to use to actually access the file, because there is no way to go from a display name to the actual name.
Using gio.file.File as an identifier has the same weaknesses as using a path in that there may be multiple aliases for the same file. For instance, hard or soft links may cause two different gio.file.Files to refer to the same file. Other possible causes for aliases are: case insensitive filesystems, short and long names on FAT/NTFS, or bind mounts in Linux. If you want to check if two gio.file.Files point to the same file you can query for the G_FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ID_FILE attribute. Note that gio.file.File does some trivial canonicalization of pathnames passed in, so that trivial differences in the path string used at creation (duplicated slashes, slash at end of path, . or .. path segments, etc) does not create different gio.file.Files.
Many gio.file.File operations have both synchronous and asynchronous versions to suit your application. Asynchronous versions of synchronous functions simply have _async() appended to their function names. The asynchronous I/O functions call a gio.types.AsyncReadyCallback which is then used to finalize the operation, producing a gio.async_result.AsyncResult which is then passed to the function’s matching _finish() operation.
It is highly recommended to use asynchronous calls when running within a shared main loop, such as in the main thread of an application. This avoids I/O operations blocking other sources on the main loop from being dispatched. Synchronous I/O operations should be performed from worker threads. See the introduction to asynchronous programming section
for more.
Some gio.file.File operations almost always take a noticeable amount of time, and so do not have synchronous analogs. Notable cases include:
Entity Tags
One notable feature of gio.file.Files are entity tags, or ‘etags’ for short. Entity tags are somewhat like a more abstract version of the traditional mtime, and can be used to quickly determine if the file has been modified from the version on the file system. See the HTTP 1.1 specification
for HTTP ETag headers, which are a very similar concept.