how to find the owner of a file or directory in python

Question

I need a function or method in Python to find the owner of a file or directory.

The function should be like:

>>> find_owner("/home/somedir/somefile")
owner3

Answer 1

I'm not really much of a python guy, but I was able to whip this up:

from os import stat
from pwd import getpwuid

def find_owner(filename):
    return getpwuid(stat(filename).st_uid).pw_name

Answer 2

You want to use os.stat():

os.stat(path)
 Perform the equivalent of a stat() system call on the given path. 
 (This function follows symlinks; to stat a symlink use lstat().)

The return value is an object whose attributes correspond to the 
members of the stat structure, namely:

- st_mode - protection bits,
- st_ino - inode number,
- st_dev - device,
- st_nlink - number of hard links,
- st_uid - user id of owner,
- st_gid - group id of owner,
- st_size - size of file, in bytes,
- st_atime - time of most recent access,
- st_mtime - time of most recent content modification,
- st_ctime - platform dependent; time of most recent metadata 
             change on Unix, or the time of creation on Windows)

Example of usage to get owner UID:

from os import stat
stat(my_filename).st_uid

Note, however, that stat returns user id number (for example, 0 for root), not actual user name.

Answer 3

I stumbled across this recently, looking to get owner user and group information, so I thought I'd share what I came up with:

import os
from pwd import getpwuid
from grp import getgrgid

def get_file_ownership(filename):
    return (
        getpwuid(os.stat(filename).st_uid).pw_name,
        getgrgid(os.stat(filename).st_gid).gr_name
    )

Answer 4

Here is some example code, showing how you can find the owner of file:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import pwd
filename = '/etc/passwd'
st = os.stat(filename)
uid = st.st_uid
print(uid)
# output: 0
userinfo = pwd.getpwuid(st.st_uid)
print(userinfo)
# output: pwd.struct_passwd(pw_name='root', pw_passwd='x', pw_uid=0, 
#          pw_gid=0, pw_gecos='root', pw_dir='/root', pw_shell='/bin/bash')
ownername = pwd.getpwuid(st.st_uid).pw_name
print(ownername)
# output: root

Answer 5

See os.stat. It gives you st_uid which is the user ID of the owner. Then you have to convert it to the name. To do that, use pwd.getpwuid.