Check whether a path exists on a remote host using paramiko

Question

Paramiko's SFTPClient apparently does not have an exists method. This is my current implementation:

def rexists(sftp, path):
    """os.path.exists for paramiko's SCP object
    """
    try:
        sftp.stat(path)
    except IOError, e:
        if 'No such file' in str(e):
            return False
        raise
    else:
        return True

Is there a better way to do this? Checking for substring in Exception messages is pretty ugly and can be unreliable.

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 08 '09 at 00:29

21

See the errno module for constants defining all those error codes. Also, it's a bit clearer to use the errno attribute of the exception than the expansion of the __init__ args, so I'd do this:

except IOError, e: # or "as" if you're using Python 3.0
  if e.errno == errno.ENOENT:
    ...

answered Sep 08 '09 at 00:29

Matt Good

3,027
22
15

This is probably the right way to do because stat() on a non existing file on a SFTP server via Paramiko will raise this particular exception with the errno.ENOENT error code: https://github.com/paramiko/paramiko/blob/master/paramiko/sftp_client.py#L722 – Devy Jun 17 '14 at 15:13

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited May 10 '19 at 21:51

10

Paramiko literally raises FileNotFoundError

def sftp_exists(sftp, path):
    try:
        sftp.stat(path)
        return True
    except FileNotFoundError:
        return False

edited May 10 '19 at 21:51

Josephine Moeller

904
7
17

answered Jan 05 '19 at 23:10

jslay

479
4
9

It's actually `FileNotFoundError` (from the builtin exception classes) ETA: queued an edit to this answer to change it – Josephine Moeller May 10 '19 at 20:54

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered May 12 '09 at 02:16

There is no "exists" method defined for SFTP (not just paramiko), so your method is fine.

I think checking the errno is a little cleaner:

def rexists(sftp, path):
    """os.path.exists for paramiko's SCP object
    """
    try:
        sftp.stat(path)
    except IOError, e:
        if e[0] == 2:
            return False
        raise
    else:
        return True

Check whether a path exists on a remote host using paramiko

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