PyQt: QFileDialog.getExistingDirectory using a default directory, user independant

Question

When using the QFileDialog.getExistingDirectory I\'ve found the way to specify the default path to a directory. I wanted to use a default directory somewhere in my

Answer 1

You can also get home folder for any user by obtaining the environment variable "HOME" through os.getenv(varname).

>>> import os
>>> os.getenv("HOME")
'/home/my_user_name'

Your code could look like this:

import os
home = os.getenv("HOME")

my_dir = QtGui.QFileDialog.getExistingDirectory(
    self,
    "Open a folder",
    home,
    QtGui.QFileDialog.ShowDirsOnly
    )

Answer 2

You can get the user's home directory by using os.path.expanduser

>>> from os.path import expanduser
>>> expanduser("~")
/home/user_name

This works on Windows and Linux.

Your code block will look like this then

my_dir = QtGui.QFileDialog.getExistingDirectory(
    self,
    "Open a folder",
    expanduser("~"),
    QtGui.QFileDialog.ShowDirsOnly
)