Recursively move all files on subdirectories to another directory in Python

Question

The title explains what I am after. Note that the sub directories won't contain any directories only files (*.JPG). Essentially, just moving everything up one level in the file tree.

For example, from ~/someDir/folder1/* , ~/someDir/folder2/* , ... , ~/someDir/folderN/*. I want all of the contents of the sub directories brought up to ~/someDir/.

Answer 1

shutil.move is a good option to move files.

import shutil
import os

source = "/parent/subdir"
destination = "/parent/"
files_list = os.listdir(source)
for files in files_list:
    shutil.move(files, destination)

For Recursive move, you can try shutil.copytree(SOURCE, DESTINATION). it just copies all files and if needed you can manually cleanup the source directory.

Answer 2

Also, You can achieve something similar using Pathlib.

from pathlib import Path
def _move_all_subfolder_files_to_main_folder(folder_path: Path):
    """
    This function will move all files in all subdirectories to the folder_path dir.
    folder_path/
        1/
            file1.jpg
            file2.jpg
        2/ 
            file4.jpg
    outputs:
    folder_path/
        file1.jpg
        file2.jpg
        file4.jpg
    """
    if not folder_path.is_dir():
        return

    for subfolder in folder_path.iterdir():
        for file in subfolder.iterdir():
            file.rename(folder_path / file.name)

Usage would be:

_move_all_subfolder_files_to_main_folder(Path('my_path_to_main_folder'))