How do I find the Windows common application data folder using Python?

Question

I would like my application to store some data for access by all users. Using Python, how can I find where the data should go?

Answer 1

If you don't want to add a dependency for a third-party module like winpaths, I would recommend using the environment variables already available in Windows:

• What environment variables are available in Windows?

Specifically you probably want ALLUSERSPROFILE to get the location of the common user profile folder, which is where the Application Data directory resides.

e.g.:

C:\> python -c "import os; print os.environ['ALLUSERSPROFILE']"
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users

EDIT: Looking at the winpaths module, it's using ctypes so if you wanted to just use the relevant part of the code without installing winpath, you can use this (obviously some error checking omitted for brevity).

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes, windll

CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA = 35

_SHGetFolderPath = windll.shell32.SHGetFolderPathW
_SHGetFolderPath.argtypes = [wintypes.HWND,
                            ctypes.c_int,
                            wintypes.HANDLE,
                            wintypes.DWORD, wintypes.LPCWSTR]


path_buf = wintypes.create_unicode_buffer(wintypes.MAX_PATH)
result = _SHGetFolderPath(0, CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA, 0, 0, path_buf)
print path_buf.value

Example run:

C:\> python get_common_appdata.py
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data