A tool to generate checksums for all files in current directory and notify when mismatches with an existing file are found

recursive_checksum.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import json
from hashlib import md5

rootdir = os.getcwd()

CHECKSUMS = "checksums.json"

try:
    with open(CHECKSUMS) as f:
        output = json.load(f)
except:
    output = {}

def md5sum(filename):
    """ Opens a file and progressively generates an MD5 hash
        from its contents, avoiding loading the complete
        contents into ram at once
        http://stackoverflow.com/a/24847608 """
    hash = md5()
    with open(filename, "rb") as f:
        for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(128 * hash.block_size), b""):
            hash.update(chunk)
    return hash.hexdigest()

def main():
    """ Iterate over files in subdirectories of current dir, use
        md5sum() to generate checksums for each, append to a dict
        for inclusion in checksums.json (name configurable) or
        checks an existing checksums.json for conflicts """
    for folder, subs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
        for filename in files:
            if filename == CHECKSUMS:
                continue
            fn = os.path.join(folder, filename)[len(rootdir)+1:]
            if fn in output:
                if output[fn] != md5sum(os.path.join(folder, filename)):
                    # replace with code to redownload given file?
                    print("Mismatch on {}".format(fn))
            else:
                output[os.path.join(folder, filename)[len(rootdir)+1:]] = \
                    md5sum(os.path.join(folder, filename))

    # Pretty prints json to output file
    with open(os.path.join(rootdir, CHECKSUMS), "w") as f:
        json.dump(output, f, indent=4)

main()