# `importlib.resources.abc` – Abstract base classes for resources

Source code: Lib/importlib/resources/abc.py

New in version 3.11.

class importlib.resources.abc.ResourceReader

  Superseded by TraversableResources

  An abstract base class to provide the ability to read resources.

  From the perspective of this ABC, a resource is a binary artifact that is shipped within a package. Typically this is something like a data file that lives next to the `__init__.py` file of the package. The purpose of this class is to help abstract out the accessing of such data files so that it does not matter if the package and its data file(s) are stored in a e.g. zip file versus on the file system.

  For any of methods of this class, a resource argument is expected to be a path-like object which represents conceptually just a file name. This means that no subdirectory paths should be included in the resource argument. This is because the location of the package the reader is for, acts as the “directory”. Hence the metaphor for directories and file names is packages and resources, respectively. This is also why instances of this class are expected to directly correlate to a specific package (instead of potentially representing multiple packages or a module).

  Loaders that wish to support resource reading are expected to provide a method called `get_resource_reader(fullname)` which returns an object implementing this ABC’s interface. If the module specified by fullname is not a package, this method should return `None`. An object compatible with this ABC should only be returned when the specified module is a package.

  New in version 3.7.

  abstractmethod open_resource(resource)

    Returns an opened, file-like object for binary reading of the resource.

    If the resource cannot be found, `FileNotFoundError` is raised.

  abstractmethod resource_path(resource)

    Returns the file system path to the resource.

    If the resource does not concretely exist on the file system, raise `FileNotFoundError`.

  abstractmethod is_resource(name)

    Returns `True` if the named name is considered a resource. `FileNotFoundError` is raised if name does not exist.

  abstractmethod contents()

    Returns an iterable of strings over the contents of the package. Do note that it is not required that all names returned by the iterator be actual resources, e.g. it is acceptable to return names for which `is_resource()` would be false.

    Allowing non-resource names to be returned is to allow for situations where how a package and its resources are stored are known a priori and the non-resource names would be useful. For instance, returning subdirectory names is allowed so that when it is known that the package and resources are stored on the file system then those subdirectory names can be used directly.

    The abstract method returns an iterable of no items.

class importlib.resources.abc.Traversable

  An object with a subset of pathlib.Path methods suitable for traversing directories and opening files.

  New in version 3.9.

  name

    Abstract. The base name of this object without any parent references.

  abstractmethod iterdir()

    Yield Traversable objects in self.

  abstractmethod is_dir()

    Return True if self is a directory.

  abstractmethod is_file()

    Return True if self is a file.

  abstractmethod joinpath(child)

    Return Traversable child in self.

  abstractmethod __truediv__(child)

    Return Traversable child in self.

  abstractmethod open(mode='r', *args, **kwargs)

    mode may be ‘r’ or ‘rb’ to open as text or binary. Return a handle suitable for reading (same as `pathlib.Path.open`).

    When opening as text, accepts encoding parameters such as those accepted by `io.TextIOWrapper`.

  read_bytes()

    Read contents of self as bytes.

  read_text(encoding=None)

    Read contents of self as text.

class importlib.resources.abc.TraversableResources

  An abstract base class for resource readers capable of serving the `importlib.resources.files()` interface. Subclasses `importlib.resources.abc.ResourceReader` and provides concrete implementations of the `importlib.resources.abc.ResourceReader`’s abstract methods. Therefore, any loader supplying `importlib.abc.TraversableResources` also supplies ResourceReader.

  Loaders that wish to support resource reading are expected to implement this interface.

  New in version 3.9.

  abstractmethod files()

    Returns a `importlib.resources.abc.Traversable` object for the loaded package.