Questions about toga.paths.*

[jmdodd95682]

I'm storing a small amount of data which is read by the app and may be modified and re-written for the next time the app starts. There are 3 places that seem to be recommended for readable/writeable data defined as:

paths.data
paths.config
paths.logs

What I discovered is that all three require me to manually create the directory structure. It is not generated by briefcase.

For example, in my case the paths.data on Windows is: C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\<user_name>\<app_name>\Data

What I find weird is it feels the need to add my <user_name> again under Local directory. Since this directory is already under my user account directories, why does it need to do this? It could have just use the path:

C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\<app_name>\Data

What's more confusing is I have to manually create <user_name><app_name> directories myself. Briefcase won't do this automatically. I hope that packaging the app into an msi and then installing will do this? Otherwise this will be annoying for anyone installing the app.

In a follow-up question: How would this work for the android platform? In this case I have no idea where paths.data will be and therefore no idea where to manually create these directories.

I've read what I can from the Toga documentation, so any explanation or way to make this easier would be helpful. Thanks!

[mhsmith]

What I discovered is that all three require me to manually create the directory structure.

Thanks, this is already reported as #3236.

in my case the paths.data on Windows is: C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\<user_name>\<app_name>\Data

What I find weird is it feels the need to add my <user_name> again under Local directory. Since this directory is already under my user account directories, why does it need to do this?

The second username is not actually your username, but the author name of the app. So on other people's machines, it would always be your name, and the folder would be shared with any other apps built with the same author name.

How would this work for the android platform? In this case I have no idea where paths.data will be and therefore no idea where to manually create these directories.

I'm not sure what you're asking. To find out where paths.data will be, you simply read paths.data. To create it, you can call paths.data.mkdir(). Until #3236 is fixed, you'll have to do this within the app itself.

[jmdodd95682]

Ah! the mkdir() was the thing which was not obvious to me. That is not mentioned in the documentation. I have no problem putting the mkdir() in there.

The use of the author name makes sense. I could be a company, not a person, in which case it would make sense to have that extra level of directory in the path.

Thanks for explaining. I'll make the changes to my app and test it out.

[rmartin16]

For posterity, it is recommended to add something like this to your startup():

self.paths.data.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

[freakboy3742]

Ah! the mkdir() was the thing which was not obvious to me. That is not mentioned in the documentation.

From https://toga.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/api/resources/app_paths.html

[HalfWhitt]

As of #3543, this is now handled automatically. It'll be included in the next Toga release.