Find system folder locations in Python

I am trying to find out the location of system folders with Python 3.1. For example "My Documents" = "C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents", "Program Files" = "C:\Program Files" e开发者_如何转开发tc etc.

I found a slightly different way of doing it. This way will give you the location of various system folders and uses real words instead of CLSIDs.

import win32com.client
objShell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
allUserDocs = objShell.SpecialFolders("AllUsersDesktop")
print allUserDocs

Other available folders: AllUsersDesktop, AllUsersStartMenu, AllUsersPrograms, AllUsersStartup, Desktop, Favorites, Fonts, MyDocuments, NetHood, PrintHood, Recent, SendTo, StartMenu, Startup & Templates

In Windows 7 I can use the following environment variables to access the folders I need:

>>> import os
>>> os.environ['USERPROFILE']
'C:\\Users\\digginc'
>>> os.environ['PROGRAMFILES']
'C:\\Program Files'

To get the "My Documents" folder, you can use:

from win32com.shell import shell
df = shell.SHGetDesktopFolder()
pidl = df.ParseDisplayName(0, None,  
    "::{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103}")[1]
mydocs = shell.SHGetPathFromIDList(pidl)
print mydocs

From here.

I'm not sure what the equivalent magic incantation is for "Program Files", but that should hopefully be enough to get you started.

The Windows API call for doing this, from Vista on, is SHGetKnownFolderPath. There is an MIT-licensed wrapper (using ctypes, so no dependencies on pywin32) here.

>>> from knownpaths import *
>>> get_path(FOLDERID.ProgramFilesX86)
u'C:\\Program Files (x86)'

Here's an alternative win32com approach because WScript.Shell "special folders do not work in all language locales, a preferred method is to query the value from User Shell folders" (ref):

>>> ID = 48
>>> shapp = win32com.client.Dispatch("Shell.Application")
>>> shapp.namespace(ID).self.path
'C:\\Users\\mattw\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Administrative Tools'

The ID number comes from MSDN ShellSpecialFolderConstants Enumeration. I converted that list to csv for easy use and wrote a short python script demoing that, gist here.

Special thanks to Mr Chimp for starting this off. I relied heavily on his answer and references to get started.