class Tempfile - Documentation for Ruby 2.3.0 (original) (raw)

A utility class for managing temporary files. When you create a Tempfile object, it will create a temporary file with a unique filename. A Tempfile objects behaves just like a File object, and you can perform all the usual file operations on it: reading data, writing data, changing its permissions, etc. So although this class does not explicitly document all instance methods supported by File, you can in fact call any File instance method on a Tempfile object.

Synopsis¶ ↑

require 'tempfile'

file = Tempfile.new('foo') file.path

file.write("hello world") file.rewind file.read
file.close file.unlink

Good practices¶ ↑

Explicit close¶ ↑

When a Tempfile object is garbage collected, or when the Ruby interpreter exits, its associated temporary file is automatically deleted. This means that's it's unnecessary to explicitly delete a Tempfile after use, though it's good practice to do so: not explicitly deleting unused Tempfiles can potentially leave behind large amounts of tempfiles on the filesystem until they're garbage collected. The existence of these temp files can make it harder to determine a new Tempfile filename.

Therefore, one should always call unlink or close in an ensure block, like this:

file = Tempfile.new('foo') begin ...do something with file... ensure file.close file.unlink # deletes the temp file end

Unlink after creation¶ ↑

On POSIX systems, it's possible to unlink a file right after creating it, and before closing it. This removes the filesystem entry without closing the file handle, so it ensures that only the processes that already had the file handle open can access the file's contents. It's strongly recommended that you do this if you do not want any other processes to be able to read from or write to the Tempfile, and you do not need to know the Tempfile's filename either.

For example, a practical use case for unlink-after-creation would be this: you need a large byte buffer that's too large to comfortably fit in RAM, e.g. when you're writing a web server and you want to buffer the client's file upload data.

Please refer to unlink for more information and a code example.

Minor notes¶ ↑

Tempfile's filename picking method is both thread-safe and inter-process-safe: it guarantees that no other threads or processes will pick the same filename.

Tempfile itself however may not be entirely thread-safe. If you access the same Tempfile object from multiple threads then you should protect it with a mutex.

Public Class Methods

create(basename, tmpdir=nil, mode: 0, **options) { |tmpfile| ... } click to toggle source

Creates a temporary file as usual File object (not Tempfile). It doesn't use finalizer and delegation.

If no block is given, this is similar to Tempfile.new except creating File instead of Tempfile. The created file is not removed automatically. You should use File.unlink to remove it.

If a block is given, then a File object will be constructed, and the block is invoked with the object as the argument. The File object will be automatically closed and the temporary file is removed after the block terminates. The call returns the value of the block.

In any case, all arguments (+*args+) will be treated as Tempfile.new.

Tempfile.create('foo', '/home/temp') do |f| ... do something with f ... end

def Tempfile.create(basename, tmpdir=nil, mode: 0, **options) tmpfile = nil Dir::Tmpname.create(basename, tmpdir, options) do |tmpname, n, opts| mode |= File::RDWR|File::CREAT|File::EXCL opts[:perm] = 0600 tmpfile = File.open(tmpname, mode, opts) end if block_given? begin yield tmpfile ensure tmpfile.close if !tmpfile.closed? File.unlink tmpfile end else tmpfile end end

new(basename = "", [tmpdir = Dir.tmpdir], [options]) click to toggle source

Creates a temporary file with permissions 0600 (= only readable and writable by the owner) and opens it with mode “w+”.

The basename parameter is used to determine the name of the temporary file. You can either pass a String or an Array with 2 String elements. In the former form, the temporary file's base name will begin with the given string. In the latter form, the temporary file's base name will begin with the array's first element, and end with the second element. For example:

file = Tempfile.new('hello') file.path

file = Tempfile.new(['hello', '.jpg']) file.path

The temporary file will be placed in the directory as specified by the tmpdir parameter. By default, this is Dir.tmpdir. When SAFE>0andthegiven‘tmpdir‘istainted,ituses′/tmp′asthetemporarydirectory.Pleasenotethat[ENV](ENV.html)valuesaretaintedbydefault,and‘Dir.tmpdir‘′sreturnvaluemightcomefromenvironmentvariables(e.g.‘SAFE > 0 and the given tmpdir is tainted, it uses '/tmp' as the temporary directory. Please note that ENV values are tainted by default, and Dir.tmpdir's return value might come from environment variables (e.g. </annotation></semantics></math>SAFE>0andthegiven‘tmpdir‘istainted,ituses′/tmp′asthetemporarydirectory.Pleasenotethat[ENV](ENV.html)valuesaretaintedbydefault,and‘Dir.tmpdir‘′sreturnvaluemightcomefromenvironmentvariables(e.g.‘TMPDIR).

file = Tempfile.new('hello', '/home/aisaka') file.path

You can also pass an options hash. Under the hood, Tempfile creates the temporary file using File.open. These options will be passed to File.open. This is mostly useful for specifying encoding options, e.g.:

Tempfile.new('hello', '/home/aisaka', :encoding => 'ascii-8bit')

Tempfile.new('hello', :encoding => 'ascii-8bit')

Exceptions¶ ↑

If Tempfile.new cannot find a unique filename within a limited number of tries, then it will raise an exception.

Calls superclass method

def initialize(basename="", tmpdir=nil, mode: 0, **options) warn "Tempfile.new doesn't call the given block." if block_given?

@unlinked = false @mode = mode|File::RDWR|File::CREAT|File::EXCL ::Dir::Tmpname.create(basename, tmpdir, options) do |tmpname, n, opts| opts[:perm] = 0600 @tmpfile = File.open(tmpname, @mode, opts) @opts = opts.freeze end ObjectSpace.define_finalizer(self, Remover.new(@tmpfile))

super(@tmpfile) end

open(*args) { |tempfile| ... } click to toggle source

Creates a new Tempfile.

If no block is given, this is a synonym for Tempfile.new.

If a block is given, then a Tempfile object will be constructed, and the block is run with said object as argument. The Tempfile object will be automatically closed after the block terminates. The call returns the value of the block.

In any case, all arguments (+*args+) will be passed to Tempfile.new.

Tempfile.open('foo', '/home/temp') do |f| ... do something with f ... end

Equivalent:

f = Tempfile.open('foo', '/home/temp') begin ... do something with f ... ensure f.close end

def open(*args) tempfile = new(*args)

if block_given? begin yield(tempfile) ensure tempfile.close end else tempfile end end

Public Instance Methods

close(unlink_now=false) click to toggle source

Closes the file. If unlink_now is true, then the file will be unlinked (deleted) after closing. Of course, you can choose to later call unlink if you do not unlink it now.

If you don't explicitly unlink the temporary file, the removal will be delayed until the object is finalized.

def close(unlink_now=false) _close unlink if unlink_now end

close!() click to toggle source

Closes and unlinks (deletes) the file. Has the same effect as called close(true).

def close! close(true) end

open() click to toggle source

Opens or reopens the file with mode “r+”.

def open _close mode = @mode & ~(File::CREAT|File::EXCL) @tmpfile = File.open(@tmpfile.path, mode, @opts) setobj(@tmpfile) end

path() click to toggle source

Returns the full path name of the temporary file. This will be nil if unlink has been called.

def path @unlinked ? nil : @tmpfile.path end

size() click to toggle source

Returns the size of the temporary file. As a side effect, the IO buffer is flushed before determining the size.

def size if !@tmpfile.closed? @tmpfile.size else File.size(@tmpfile.path) end end

unlink() click to toggle source

Unlinks (deletes) the file from the filesystem. One should always unlink the file after using it, as is explained in the “Explicit close” good practice section in the Tempfile overview:

file = Tempfile.new('foo') begin ...do something with file... ensure file.close file.unlink # deletes the temp file end

Unlink-before-close¶ ↑

On POSIX systems it's possible to unlink a file before closing it. This practice is explained in detail in the Tempfile overview (section “Unlink after creation”); please refer there for more information.

However, unlink-before-close may not be supported on non-POSIX operating systems. Microsoft Windows is the most notable case: unlinking a non-closed file will result in an error, which this method will silently ignore. If you want to practice unlink-before-close whenever possible, then you should write code like this:

file = Tempfile.new('foo') file.unlink # On Windows this silently fails. begin ... do something with file ... ensure file.close! # Closes the file handle. If the file wasn't unlinked # because #unlink failed, then this method will attempt # to do so again. end

def unlink return if @unlinked begin File.unlink(@tmpfile.path) rescue Errno::ENOENT rescue Errno::EACCES

return

end ObjectSpace.undefine_finalizer(self) @unlinked = true end