# `importlib.resources.abc` – Abstract base classes for resources

Source code: Lib/importlib/resources/abc.py

Added in version 3.11.

class importlib.resources.abc.ResourceReader

  Superseded by TraversableResources

  An abstract base class to provide the ability to read resources.

  From the perspective of this ABC, a resource is a binary artifact that is shipped within a package. Typically this is something like a data file that lives next to the `__init__.py` file of the package. The purpose of this class is to help abstract out the accessing of such data files so that it does not matter if the package and its data file(s) are stored e.g. in a zip file versus on the file system.

  For any of methods of this class, a resource argument is expected to be a path-like object which represents conceptually just a file name. This means that no subdirectory paths should be included in the resource argument. This is because the location of the package the reader is for, acts as the “directory”. Hence the metaphor for directories and file names is packages and resources, respectively. This is also why instances of this class are expected to directly correlate to a specific package (instead of potentially representing multiple packages or a module).

  Loaders that wish to support resource reading are expected to provide a method called `get_resource_reader(fullname)` which returns an object implementing this ABC’s interface. If the module specified by fullname is not a package, this method should return `None`. An object compatible with this ABC should only be returned when the specified module is a package.

  Deprecated since version 3.12: Use `importlib.resources.abc.TraversableResources` instead.

  abstractmethod open_resource(resource)

    Returns an opened, file-like object for binary reading of the resource.

    If the resource cannot be found, `FileNotFoundError` is raised.

  abstractmethod resource_path(resource)

    Returns the file system path to the resource.

    If the resource does not concretely exist on the file system, raise `FileNotFoundError`.

  abstractmethod is_resource(path)

    Returns `True` if the named path is considered a resource. `FileNotFoundError` is raised if path does not exist.

    Changed in version 3.10: The argument name was renamed to path.

  abstractmethod contents()

    Returns an iterable of strings over the contents of the package. Do note that it is not required that all names returned by the iterator be actual resources, e.g. it is acceptable to return names for which `is_resource()` would be false.

    Allowing non-resource names to be returned is to allow for situations where how a package and its resources are stored are known a priori and the non-resource names would be useful. For instance, returning subdirectory names is allowed so that when it is known that the package and resources are stored on the file system then those subdirectory names can be used directly.

    The abstract method returns an iterable of no items.

class importlib.resources.abc.Traversable

  An object with a subset of `pathlib.Path` methods suitable for traversing directories and opening files.

  For a representation of the object on the file-system, use `importlib.resources.as_file()`.

  name

    Abstract. The base name of this object without any parent references.

  abstractmethod iterdir()

    Yield Traversable objects in self.

  abstractmethod is_dir()

    Return `True` if self is a directory.

  abstractmethod is_file()

    Return `True` if self is a file.

  abstractmethod joinpath(*pathsegments)

    Traverse directories according to pathsegments and return the result as `Traversable`.

    Each pathsegments argument may contain multiple names separated by forward slashes (`/`, `posixpath.sep` ). For example, the following are equivalent:

        files.joinpath('subdir', 'subsuddir', 'file.txt')
        files.joinpath('subdir/subsuddir/file.txt')

    Note that some `Traversable` implementations might not be updated to the latest version of the protocol. For compatibility with such implementations, provide a single argument without path separators to each call to `joinpath`. For example:

        files.joinpath('subdir').joinpath('subsubdir').joinpath('file.txt')

    Changed in version 3.11: `joinpath` accepts multiple pathsegments, and these segments may contain forward slashes as path separators. Previously, only a single child argument was accepted.

  abstractmethod __truediv__(child)

    Return Traversable child in self. Equivalent to `joinpath(child)`.

  abstractmethod open(mode='r', *args, **kwargs)

    mode may be ‘r’ or ‘rb’ to open as text or binary. Return a handle suitable for reading (same as `pathlib.Path.open`).

    When opening as text, accepts encoding parameters such as those accepted by `io.TextIOWrapper`.

  read_bytes()

    Read contents of self as bytes.

  read_text(encoding=None)

    Read contents of self as text.

class importlib.resources.abc.TraversableResources

  An abstract base class for resource readers capable of serving the `importlib.resources.files()` interface. Subclasses `ResourceReader` and provides concrete implementations of the `ResourceReader`’s abstract methods. Therefore, any loader supplying `TraversableResources` also supplies `ResourceReader`.

  Loaders that wish to support resource reading are expected to implement this interface.

  abstractmethod files()

    Returns a `importlib.resources.abc.Traversable` object for the loaded package.