[Tutor] iterating through a directory

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

> Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2015 09:32:34 -0400
> From: richkappler at gmail.com
> To: tutor at python.org
> Subject: [Tutor] iterating through a directory
> 
> Yes, many questions today. I'm working on a data feed script that feeds
> 'events' into our test environment. In production, we monitor a camera that
> captures an image as product passes by, gathers information such as
> barcodes and package ID from the image, and then sends out the data as a
> line of xml to one place for further processing and sends the image to
> another place for storage. Here is where our software takes over, receiving
> the xml data and images from vendor equipment. Our software then processes
> the xml data and allows retrieval of specific images associated with each
> line of xml data. Our test environment must simulate the feed from the
> vendor equipment, so I'm writing a script that feeds the xml from an actual
> log to one place for processing, and pulls images from a pool of 20, which
> we recycle, to associate with each event and sends them to another dir for
> saving and searching.
> 
>  As my script iterates through each line of xml data (discussed yesterday)
> to simulate the feed from the vendor camera equipment, it parses ID
> information about the event then sends the line of data on. As it does so,
> it needs to pull the next image in line from the image pool directory,
> rename it, send it to a different directory for saving. I'm pretty solid on
> all of this except iterating through the image pool. My idea is to just
> keep looping through the image pool, as each line of xmldata is parsed, the
> next image in line gets pulled out, renamed with the identifying
> information from the xml data, and both are sent on to different places.
> 
> I only have one idea for doing this iterating through the image pool, and
> frankly I think the idea is pretty weak. The only thing I can come up with
> is to change the name of each image in the pool from something
> like 0219PS01CT1_20111129_000004_00044979.jpg to 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg etc.,
> then doing something like:
> 
> i = 0
> 
> here begins my for line in file loop:
>     if i == 20:
>         i = 1
>     else:
>         i += 1
>     do stuff with the xml file including get ID info
>     rename i.jpg to IDinfo.jpg
>     send it all on
> 
> That seems pretty barbaric, any thoughts on where to look for better ideas?
> I'm presuming there are modules out there that I am unaware of or
> capabilities I am unaware of in modules I do know a little about that I am
> missing.

I do not really understand what you intend to do, but the following modules might come in handy
-os  (os.rename, os.listdir)
-glob (glob.iglob or glob.glob)
-shutil (shutil.copy)