python: relative paths

So I started yesterday with Django, and I decided I didn’t want to futz with creating another mysql database that I’d need to manage, etc. Instead I’ll just use sqlite.

I wanted to keep my sqlite database within my project regardless of where I might move my project later. So I did this:

I confused a lot of people on IRC, but it’s really quite easy:

• __file__ is the filename of the current script, very similar to PHP’s __FILE__
• os.path.abspath calculates the absolute path, hence the absolute path of the current file
• os.path.join does all the nasty business of joining paths together and figuring out what type of slashes are needed, etc.
• ‘data/db.sqlite’ is a string

So really all we were doing is creating a relative path, but setting it absolutely.