According to this Question , it is said that to use a library or file from local folder, we use:
import sys
sys.path.append("/path/to/your/directory")
But what my doubt is that, is :
import sys
sys.path.append("/path/to/your/directory")
and:
locals()['path'].append("/path/to/your/directory")
and:
globals()['path'].append("/path/to/your/directory")
do the same function to import the directory files, or do vary by de-merits?
(I haven't seen any discussion about this anywere else)
"Hacking" the sys.path to enable imports is bad practice. Use editable installs instead:
pip install --editable /path/to/your/directory
This will insert a symlink of your project into the site-packages folder and
allow Python to properly find your packages.
Related
I am not seeing an answer to this out there, so apologies if this is a duplicate. Basically, I am trying to understand how to force my interpreter (2.7) to import a module from site packages if there is a conflict. For example imagine you are running python from a directory (top_level) that has the following structure:
top_level
----cool_mod
----init.py
----sweet_module.py
but you have already installed sweet module to site packages. When in this directory (but no others) if you run:
from cool_mod.sweet_module import *
you will import from the local module, not the global one. Can I change this somehow?
This situation might arise from the case:
top_level
setup.py
----cool_mod
----init.py
----sweet_module.py
You can run cool_mod.sweet_module before installing if you working directory is top_level. But after installing you can import cool_mod.sweet_module from anywhere. However, if you ever import from this directory, even after installation, you still import the local copy
Inserting the site package directory at the begining of sys.path, and then import.
Or, use imp.load_source to load a module from specified path.
My code depends on functions from a module external_module which is in my pythonpath path and which I include as
# global import
import external_module.sub_mod_one as smo
Now I want to share my code but I don't want to force my collaborators to checkout my other git repos and add them to their environment.
So, I thought I can copy the files to the local directory and rewrite the import as
# local import
import sub_mod_one as smo
However, since development goes on, I don't want to do this manually.
Question Is there a python module or vim plugin or something else that does this for me? Namely, copying the the included modules to the current folder and rewriting the import statements?
The "right" solution is to
properly package your "external_module" so it can be installed with pip,
add to your project(s) a pip requirements file referencing your package
then have everybody using virtualenvs
This way the package will be cleanly installed (and at the right version), you don't have to mess with your exports, and you dont have out of sync copies of your package everywhere.
You could use conditional imports:
try:
import external_module.sub_mod_one as smo
except ImportError:
import sub_mod_one as smo
I'm using suds (brilliant library, btw), and I'd like to make it portable (so that everyone who uses the code that relies on it, can just checkout the files and run it).
I have tracked down 'suds-0.4-py2.6.egg' (in python/lib/site-packages), and put it in with my files, and I've tried:
import path.to.egg.file.suds
from path.to.egg.file.suds import *
import path.to.egg.file.suds-0.4-py2.6
The first two complain that suds doesn't exist, and the last one has invalid syntax.
In the __init__.py file, I have:
__all__ = [ "FileOne" ,
"FileTwo",
"suds-0.4-py2.6"]
and have previously tried
__all__ = [ "FileOne" ,
"FileTwo",
"suds"]
but neither work.
Is this the right way of going about it? If so, how can I get my imports to work. If not, how else can I achieve the same result?
Thanks
You must add your egg file to sys.path, like this:
import sys
# insert at 0 instead of appending to end to take precedence
# over system-installed suds (if there is one).
sys.path.insert(0, "suds-0.4-py2.6.egg")
import suds
.egg files are zipped archives; hence you cannot directly import them as you have discovered.
The easy way is to simply unzip the archive, and then copy the suds directory to your application's source code directory. Since Python will stop at the first module it discovers; your local copy of suds will be used even if it is not installed globally for Python.
One step up from that, is to add the egg to your path by appending it to sys.path.
However, the proper way would be to package your application for distribution; or provide a requirements file that lets other people know what external packages your program depends on.
Usually I distribute my program with a requirements.txt file that contain all dependencies and their version.
The users can then install these libraries with:
pip install -r requirements.txt
I don't think including eggs with your code is a good idea, what if the user use python2.7 instead of python2.6
More info about requirement file: http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/requirements.html
I'm using Python 2.7. I'm rather new to the python langauge. I have two python modules - "Trailcrest.py" and "Glyph.py", both in the same folder, but not in the Python27 folder.
I need to import "Trailcrest.py" into "Glyph.py", but I am getting the message that "no such module exists".
Additionally, whatever means I use to import the module needs to not be dependent on a solid-state path. This program is cross-platform, and the path can be changed depending on the user's preferences. However, these two modules will always be in the same folder together.
How do I do this?
If you have Trailcrest.py and Glyph.py in the same folder, importing one into the other is as simple as:
import Trailcrest
import Glyph
If this does not work, there seems to be something wrong with your Python setup. You might want to check what's in sys.path.
import sys
print sys.path
To elaborate a bit on Ferdinand Beyer's answer, sys.path is a list of file locations that the default module importer checks. Some, though not all installations of python will add the current directory or the directory of the __main__ module to the path. To make sure that the paths relative to a given module are importable in that module, do something like this:
import os.path, sys
sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(__file__))
But something like that shouldn't ever make it into a "production" product. Instead, use something like distutils to install the module's package into the python site-packages directory.
This can also be achieved using the environment variable PYTHONPATH which also influences Python's search path. This can be done in a shell script so that the Python files do not need to be altered. If you want it to import from the current working directory use the . notation in bash:
export PYTHONPATH=.
python python_prog.py
I have a python app, that I'm developing. There is a need to use another library, that resides in different directory.
The file layout looks like this:
dir X has two project dirs:
current-project
xLibrary
I'd like to use xLibrary in currentProject. I've been trying writting code as if all the sources resided in the same directory and calling my projects main script with:
PYTHONPATH=.:../xLibrary ./current-project.py
but this does not work. I'd like to use its code base without installing the library globaly or copying it to my project's directory. Is it possible? Or if not, how should I deal with this problem.
It's generally a good programming practice to isolate packages into actual packages and treat them as such. If you're sure you'd like to continue with that approach though you can modify the search path from within python via:
import sys
sys.path.append( "<path_containing_the_other_python_files>" )
To avoid embedding absolute paths, you can use os.path.abspath(__file__) to obtain the absolute path to the currently executing .py file and follow up with a few os.path.dirname() calls to construct the proper relative path for inclusion to sys.path
A slightly altered approach that would allow you to get the best of both worlds would be to add an __init__.py file to xLibrary's directory then add the path containing 'xLibrary' to sys.path instead. Subsequent Python code could then import everything "properly" via from xLibrary import my_module rather than just import my_module which could be confusing to people accustomed to the standard package directory layout.
This depends how you use xLibrary from current-project.
If you do something like from xLibrary import module1 inside current-project, the xLibrary needs to be laid out as a Python package:
xLibrary/
xLibrary/__init__.py
xLibrary/module1.py # or whatever other modules the package consists of
In this case, you should include xLibrary's parent directory in PYTHONPATH:
PYTHONPATH=.:.. ./current-project.py
However, if xLibrary is just a collection of Python modules that you import individually (that is, if you do import module1 and import module2 ìn current-project, with xLibrary containing the files module1.py and module2.py), you should include xLibrary in PYTHONPATH just as you did:
PYTHONPATH=.:../xLibrary ./current-project.py
bash$ ln -s ../xLibrary xLibrary
First, it is probably better to use absolute paths in your PYTHONPATH variable.
Second, I don't think you need to add current directory to the path.
Other than that, it would be good to know what it is that doesn't work and what the error message is.
The command line you have there seems to be missing a semicolon
Try these two:
a=12 echo $a
b=12 ;echo $b
...and you'll see the difference.
Apart from the other suggestions, you may consider the virtualenv package. After writing a little setup.py file you can "virtually install" the library and avoid all the PYTHONPATH munging in general.
This is a really good practice and is encouraged by the python community.
Otherwise I prefer the use of sys.path method (by Rakis)