How do you get a directory listing sorted by creation date in python?

Question

What is the best way to get a list of all files in a directory, sorted by date [created | modified], using python, on a windows machine?

Answer 1

Without changing directory:

import os    

path = '/path/to/files/'
name_list = os.listdir(path)
full_list = [os.path.join(path,i) for i in name_list]
time_sorted_list = sorted(full_list, key=os.path.getmtime)

print time_sorted_list

# if you want just the filenames sorted, simply remove the dir from each
sorted_filename_list = [ os.path.basename(i) for i in time_sorted_list]
print sorted_filename_list

Answer 2

There is an os.path.getmtime function that gives the number of seconds since the epoch and should be faster than os.stat.

import os 

os.chdir(directory)
sorted(filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir('.')), key=os.path.getmtime)

Answer 3

sorted(filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir('.')), 
    key=lambda p: os.stat(p).st_mtime)

You could use os.walk('.').next()[-1] instead of filtering with os.path.isfile, but that leaves dead symlinks in the list, and os.stat will fail on them.

Answer 4

For completeness with os.scandir (2x faster over pathlib):

import os
sorted(os.scandir('/tmp/test'), key=lambda d: d.stat().st_mtime)

Answer 5

This was my version:

import os

folder_path = r'D:\Movies\extra\new\dramas' # your path
os.chdir(folder_path) # make the path active
x = sorted(os.listdir(), key=os.path.getctime)  # sorted using creation time

folder = 0

for folder in range(len(x)):
    print(x[folder]) # print all the foldername inside the folder_path
    folder = +1

Answer 6

Here's my answer using glob without filter if you want to read files with a certain extension in date order (Python 3).

dataset_path='/mydir/'   
files = glob.glob(dataset_path+"/morepath/*.extension")   
files.sort(key=os.path.getmtime)