From 20bbdb6d553590737415fc4ae9b42341a185e512 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:26:14 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Add Make Secure Temp File For Atomic Write as a Python TIL

---
 README.md                                     |  3 +-
 .../make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md | 48 +++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100644 python/make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 09a7a24..92d4468 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ working across different projects via [VisualMode](https://www.visualmode.dev/).
 
 For a steady stream of TILs, [sign up for my newsletter](https://visualmode.kit.com/newsletter).
 
-_1798 TILs and counting..._
+_1799 TILs and counting..._
 
 See some of the other learning resources I work on:
 
@@ -1079,6 +1079,7 @@ If you've learned something here, support my efforts writing daily TILs by
 - [Load A File Into The Python REPL](python/load-a-file-into-the-python-repl.md)
 - [Look Inside Pytest tmp_path](python/look-inside-pytest-tmp-path.md)
 - [Make Dataclass Sortable By Specific Field](python/make-dataclass-sortable-by-specific-field.md)
+- [Make Secure Temp File For Atomic Write](python/make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md)
 - [Override The Boolean Context Of A Class](python/override-the-boolean-context-of-a-class.md)
 - [Parse Relative Time To datetime Object](python/parse-relative-time-to-datetime-object.md)
 - [Reclassify Certain Packages As Dev Dependencies](python/reclassify-certain-packages-as-dev-dependencies.md)
diff --git a/python/make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md b/python/make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b12d4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python/make-secure-temp-file-for-atomic-write.md
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+# Make Secure Temp File For Atomic Write
+
+Two types of failure modes that can occur while writing to a shared file on the
+file system are 1) a corrupted file due to a crash mid-write and 2) another
+process reading a partial file mid-write.
+
+One way I've handled this in [`py-vmt`](https://github.com/jbranchaud/py-vmt) is
+to perform the write operations on a secure temp file and then use the OS-level
+atomic `rename` operation. I do this by [creating a
+`contextmanager`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/contextlib.html#contextlib.contextmanager)
+that uses
+[`tempfile.mkstemp`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/tempfile.html#tempfile.mkstemp)
+and [`os.replace`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.replace).
+
+Here is what the `contextmanager` looks like:
+
+```python
+from contextlib import contextmanager
+from pathlib import Path
+import os, tempfile
+
+@contextmanager
+def atomic_write(path: Path):
+    # write to a tmp file in the same directory, then atomically swap it
+    fd, temp_file_path = tempfile.mkstemp(dir=path.parent, suffix=".tmp")
+    try:
+        with os.fdopen(fd, "w") as file:
+            yield file
+        os.replace(temp_file_path, path)
+    except BaseException:
+        os.unlink(temp_file_path)
+        raise
+```
+
+This explicitly creates a secure temp file in the same directory as the given
+path with `.tmp` as the suffix. I then open the file descriptor using the
+`os.fdopen` context manager (which will manage closing the file descriptor for
+me). The `@contextmanager` decorator plus the `yield file` are what allow this
+to be used as a `with` block. Once any file operations are done, then I use
+`os.replace` to atomically swap out the original file with the temp file.
+
+Here is how I use it to write updates to JSON data files:
+
+```python
+def write_active_session(self, session: Session) -> None:
+    with atomic_write(self.active_session_file) as file:
+        json.dump(session.marshal(), file)
+```