Create a temporary FIFO (named pipe) in Python?

Question

How can you create a temporary FIFO (named pipe) in Python? This should work:

import tempfile

temp_file_name = mktemp()
os.mkfifo(temp_file_name)
open(temp_         


        

Answer 1

You may find it handy to use the following context manager, which creates and removes the temporary file for you:

import os
import tempfile
from contextlib import contextmanager


@contextmanager
def temp_fifo():
    """Context Manager for creating named pipes with temporary names."""
    tmpdir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    filename = os.path.join(tmpdir, 'fifo')  # Temporary filename
    os.mkfifo(filename)  # Create FIFO
    try:
        yield filename
    finally:
        os.unlink(filename)  # Remove file
        os.rmdir(tmpdir)  # Remove directory

You can use it, for example, like this:

with temp_fifo() as fifo_file:
    # Pass the fifo_file filename e.g. to some other process to read from.
    # Write something to the pipe 
    with open(fifo_file, 'w') as f:
        f.write("Hello\n")