Load local data files to Colaboratory

I was a bit confused by the example for loading local files on first glance as there was no place to specify a file path. All you need to do is copy and paste the recipe to figure this out, but to be clear:

from google.colab import filesuploaded = files.upload()

will open an upload dialogue window where you can browse and select your local files for upload.

Then

for fn in uploaded.keys():  print('User uploaded file "{name}" with length {length} bytes'.format(      name=fn, length=len(uploaded[fn])))

will show you the keys to access what you just uploaded.

Edit for additional clarification: The dictionary uploaded will have keys of the selected filenames - so if for example you select a file my_test.txt, then you would access that file using uploaded['my_test.txt'].

Yes, all of these scenarios are supported.

For recipes to access local and Drive files, check out the I/O example notebook.

For access to xls files, you'll want to upload the file to Google Sheets. Then, you can use the gspread recipes in the same I/O example notebook.

A recently added way to upload local files is to use the 'Files' tab in the right hand side drawer.

From there, you can upload a local file using the 'upload' button.

(You can also download files by right clicking on them in the file tree.)

First, executing this cell should create an inline "Choose Files" button

from google.colab import filesuploaded = files.upload()

After selecting your file(s), uploaded will be a dictionary of keys (the file names) and values (the encoded file objects). To decode the files for a library such as Pandas, try

import pandas as pdimport iodf = pd.read_csv(io.StringIO(uploaded['filename.csv'].decode('utf-8')))

After this your dataframe df should be ready to go