Python, opening TarFile from data in a variable

Question

I get a tar file in the body of a http post request and I want to extract the contents without first writing the tar file to disc. The file used to be a zip file and i could do

zip = zipfile.ZipFile(StringIO(request.content.read()))
zip.extractall(some_path)

How do i do the same thing using tarfile.TarFile?

I tried

tar = tarfile.open(fileobj = StringIO(self.request.content.read()))

but got the error message:

file could not be opened successfully

John Keyes · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-03T12:44:48.287

0

Use the fileobj parameter to tarfile.open.

Edit: I tried the following:

# t.py
import tarfile
import StringIO

tarf = open('test.tar', 'rb')
tarstrio = StringIO.StringIO(tarf.read())
tar = tarfile.open(fileobj=tarstrio)

tar.list()

and it worked as expected.

edited Oct 03 '12 at 12:44

answered Oct 03 '12 at 09:06

John Keyes

5,479
1
29
48

I tried it but didnt get it to work. I updated my question whit the info – user1622094 Oct 03 '12 at 09:18
It's possible the content is invalid. To test that, write it to a file and then validate it with `tar tf ...` on the command line. – John Keyes Oct 03 '12 at 12:46
You where right about the content being invalid. With valid data it works. – user1622094 Oct 03 '12 at 14:32

Python, opening TarFile from data in a variable

1 Answers1