pkgdata is a simple, extensible way for a package to acquire data file resources.

The getResource function is equivalent to the standard idioms, such as the following minimal implementation:

import sys, os

def getResource(identifier, pkgname=__name__):
    pkgpath = os.path.dirname(sys.modules[pkgname].__file__)
    path = os.path.join(pkgpath, identifier)
    return open(os.path.normpath(path), mode='rb')

When a __loader__ is present on the module given by __name__, it will defer getResource to its get_data implementation and return it as a file-like object (such as StringIO).

sympy.utilities.pkgdata.get_resource(identifier, pkgname='sympy.utilities.pkgdata')[source]

Acquire a readable object for a given package name and identifier. An IOError will be raised if the resource can not be found.

For example:

mydata = get_resource('mypkgdata.jpg').read()

Note that the package name must be fully qualified, if given, such that it would be found in sys.modules.

In some cases, getResource will return a real file object. In that case, it may be useful to use its name attribute to get the path rather than use it as a file-like object. For example, you may be handing data off to a C API.