Copy Certain Files from One Folder to Another using Python

Python offers various tools for file manipulation such as shutil module (short for shell utility) which allows us to manipulate files and directories, enabling you to perform various file and directory operations.

Copying Files From one Folder to Another

The goal is to scan a source folder, identify files based on specific criteria, and duplicate them into a target folder. We will utilize Python's standard library modules: 'Os', 'shutil', and 'glob'

• Os: Interacts with the operating system for file system navigation and path management.
• shutil: Provides functions for high-level file operations such as copying, moving, renaming, and deleting files.
• glob: Searches for files in a directory using pattern matching.

Copy All Files

Let's start with a basic example where we copy all files from a source folder to a target folder. We will use the 'os' module to iterate through the files in the source folder and the shuttle module to perform the actual copying.

Example

This example describes a process that takes source and target folder paths. It uses 'os.listdir()' to list files in the source folder, checks if each item is a file with 'os.path.isfile()', and copies it to the target folder using 'shutil.copy()'.

import os
import shutil

def copy_all_files(source_folder, target_folder):
    for filename in os.listdir(source_folder):
        source_file = os.path.join(source_folder, filename)
        if os.path.isfile(source_file):
            shutil.copy(source_file, target_folder)

copy_all_files('source_folder', 'target_folder')

Output

Following is the output of the above code ?

All files from 'source_folder' will be copied to 'target_folder'.

Copy Files with Specific Extensions

Sometimes, we might only want to copy files with certain extensions for instance, we might want to copy only .txt files or .jpg images. Let's modify our previous example to achieve this.

Example

In this modified version, we added an extension parameter to the function. We then check if each file's name ends with the specified extension before copying it to the target folder.

import os
import shutil

def copy_files_with_extension(source_folder, target_folder, extension):
    for filename in os.listdir(source_folder):
        source_file = os.path.join(source_folder, filename)
        if os.path.isfile(source_file) and filename.endswith(extension):
            shutil.copy(source_file, target_folder)

copy_files_with_extension("source_folder", "target_folder", ".txt")

Output

Following is the output of the above code ?

Only `.txt` files from `source_folder` will be copied to `target_folder`.

Copy Files Based on Filename Patterns

What if we want to copy files based on specific patterns in their names for instance, we may want to copy all files starting with "report_" or ending with "_final." We can achieve this using the 'glob' module in Python.

Example

In this example, we defined a function that takes the source folder, target folder, and desired pattern as arguments. Used glob.glob() to get a list of file paths that match the specified pattern in the source folder.

import shutil
import glob
import os

def copy_files_with_pattern(source_folder, target_folder, pattern):
    for file_path in glob.glob(os.path.join(source_folder, pattern)):
        if os.path.isfile(file_path):
            shutil.copy(file_path, target_folder)

copy_files_with_pattern('source_folder', 'target_folder', 'report_*')

Output

Following is the output of the above code ?

Files that start with `report_` from `source_folder` will be copied to `target_folder`.