I come from a PHP (as well as a bunch of other stuff) background and I am playing around with Python. In PHP when I want to include another file I just do include or require and everything in that file is included.
But it seems the recommended way to do stuff in python is from file import but that seems to be more for including libraries and stuff? How do you separate your code amongst several files? Is the only way to do it, to have a single file with a whole bunch of function calls and then import 15 other files?
Things are totally different between PHP and Python, and there are many reasons why.
But it seems the recommended way to do stuff in python is from file import but that seems to be more for including libraries and stuff?
Indeed, import statements are for importing objects from another module to current module. You can either import all the objects of the imported module to current module:
import foo
print foo.bar
or you can select what you want from that module:
from foo import bar
print bar
and even better, if you import a module twice, it will be only imported once:
>> import foo as foo1
>> import foo as foo2
>> foo1 is foo2
True
How do you separate your code amongst several files?
You have to think about your code... That's called software design, and here are a few rules:
you never write an algorithm at the module's level; instead make it a function, and call that function
you never instantiate an object at the module's level; you shall embed it in the function, and call that function
if you need an object in several different functions, create a class and encapsulate that object in that class, then use it in your functions bound to that class (so they now are called methods)
The only exception is when you want to launch a program from command line, you append:
if __name__ == "__main__":
at the end of the module. And my best advice would be to just call your first function afterwards:
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Is the only way to do it, to have a single file with a whole bunch of function calls and then import 15 other files?
It's not the only way to do it, but it's the best way to do it. You make all your algorithms into libraries of functions and objects, and then import exactly what you need in other libraries etc.. That's how you create a whole universe of reusable code and never have to reinvent the wheel! So forget about files, and think about modules that contains objects.
Finally, my best advice to you learning python is to unlearn every habit and usage you had while coding PHP, and learn those things again, differently. In the end, that can only make you a better software engineer.
I guess I understand what you are tring to say and to do.
Here is the random include example from PHP:
File #1 - vars.php
<?php
$color = 'green';
$fruit = 'apple';
?>
File #2 - main.php
<?php
echo "A $color $fruit"; // A
include 'vars.php';
echo "A $color $fruit"; // A green apple
?>
The fist echo command will print just "A" string, for it does not have any values assigned to the vars. The next echo will print a full string thanks to your include before it.
Python's "import", however, imports a module or it's part, so you could work with it in your current module.
Here is a python example:
File 1 - echo.py
apple = 'apple'
color = 'green'
File 2 - main.py
import echo
def func():
print "A "+echo.color+" "+echo.fruit
if __name__ == '__main__':
func()
In other words - you import some functionality from one module and then use it in your other module.
The example above is not really good from programming standarts or best practises, but I think it gives you some understanding.
Interesting question. As you know, in PHP, you can separate your code by using include, which literally takes all the code in the included file and puts it wherever you called include. This is convenient for writing web applications because you can easily divide a page into parts (such as header, navigation, footer, etc).
Python, on the other hand, is used for way more than just web applications. To reuse code, you must rely on functions or good old object-oriented programming. PHP also has functions and object-oriented programming FYI.
You write functions and classes in a file and import it in another file. This lets you access the functions or use the classes you defined in the other file.
Lets say you have a function called foo in file file1.py. From file2.py, you can write
import file1. Then, call foo with file1.foo(). Alternatively, write from file1 import foo and then you can call foo with foo(). Note that the from lets you call foo directly. For more info, look at the python docs.
On a technical level, a Python import is very similar to a PHP require, as it will execute the imported file. But since Python isn't designed to ultimately generate an HTML file, the way you use it is very different.
Typically a Python file will on the module level not include much executable code at all, but definitions of functions and classes. You them import them and use them as a library.
Hence having things like header() and footer() makes no sense in Python. Those are just functions. Call them like that, and the result they generate will be ignored.
So how do you split up your Python code? Well, you split it up into functions and classes, which you put into different files, and then import.
There's an execfile() function which does something vaguely comparable with PHP's include, here, but it's almost certainly something you don't want to do. As others have said, it's just a different model and a different programming need in Python. Your code is going to go from function to function, and it doesn't really make a difference in which order you put them, as long as they're in an order where you define things before you use them. You're just not trying to end up with some kind of ordered document like you typically are with PHP, so the need isn't there.
Related
I'd like to dynamically create a module from a dictionary, and I'm wondering if adding an element to sys.modules is really the best way to do this. EG
context = { a: 1, b: 2 }
import types
test_context_module = types.ModuleType('TestContext', 'Module created to provide a context for tests')
test_context_module.__dict__.update(context)
import sys
sys.modules['TestContext'] = test_context_module
My immediate goal in this regard is to be able to provide a context for timing test execution:
import timeit
timeit.Timer('a + b', 'from TestContext import *')
It seems that there are other ways to do this, since the Timer constructor takes objects as well as strings. I'm still interested in learning how to do this though, since a) it has other potential applications; and b) I'm not sure exactly how to use objects with the Timer constructor; doing so may prove to be less appropriate than this approach in some circumstances.
EDITS/REVELATIONS/PHOOEYS/EUREKA:
I've realized that the example code relating to running timing tests won't actually work, because import * only works at the module level, and the context in which that statement is executed is that of a function in the testit module. In other words, the globals dictionary used when executing that code is that of __main__, since that's where I was when I wrote the code in the interactive shell. So that rationale for figuring this out is a bit botched, but it's still a valid question.
I've discovered that the code run in the first set of examples has the undesirable effect that the namespace in which the newly created module's code executes is that of the module in which it was declared, not its own module. This is like way weird, and could lead to all sorts of unexpected rattlesnakeic sketchiness. So I'm pretty sure that this is not how this sort of thing is meant to be done, if it is in fact something that the Guido doth shine upon.
The similar-but-subtly-different case of dynamically loading a module from a file that is not in python's include path is quite easily accomplished using imp.load_source('NewModuleName', 'path/to/module/module_to_load.py'). This does load the module into sys.modules. However this doesn't really answer my question, because really, what if you're running python on an embedded platform with no filesystem?
I'm battling a considerable case of information overload at the moment, so I could be mistaken, but there doesn't seem to be anything in the imp module that's capable of this.
But the question, essentially, at this point is how to set the global (ie module) context for an object. Maybe I should ask that more specifically? And at a larger scope, how to get Python to do this while shoehorning objects into a given module?
Hmm, well one thing I can tell you is that the timeit function actually executes its code using the module's global variables. So in your example, you could write
import timeit
timeit.a = 1
timeit.b = 2
timeit.Timer('a + b').timeit()
and it would work. But that doesn't address your more general problem of defining a module dynamically.
Regarding the module definition problem, it's definitely possible and I think you've stumbled on to pretty much the best way to do it. For reference, the gist of what goes on when Python imports a module is basically the following:
module = imp.new_module(name)
execfile(file, module.__dict__)
That's kind of the same thing you do, except that you load the contents of the module from an existing dictionary instead of a file. (I don't know of any difference between types.ModuleType and imp.new_module other than the docstring, so you can probably use them interchangeably) What you're doing is somewhat akin to writing your own importer, and when you do that, you can certainly expect to mess with sys.modules.
As an aside, even if your import * thing was legal within a function, you might still have problems because oddly enough, the statement you pass to the Timer doesn't seem to recognize its own local variables. I invoked a bit of Python voodoo by the name of extract_context() (it's a function I wrote) to set a and b at the local scope and ran
print timeit.Timer('print locals(); a + b', 'sys.modules["__main__"].extract_context()').timeit()
Sure enough, the printout of locals() included a and b:
{'a': 1, 'b': 2, '_timer': <built-in function time>, '_it': repeat(None, 999999), '_t0': 1277378305.3572791, '_i': None}
but it still complained NameError: global name 'a' is not defined. Weird.
I am building a python library. The functions I want available for users are in stemmer.py. Stemmer.py uses stemmerutil.py
I was wondering whether there is a way to make stemmerutil.py not accessible to users.
If you want to hide implementation details from your users, there are two routes that you can go. The first uses conventions to signal what is and isn't part of the public API, and the other is a hack.
The convention for declaring an API within a python library is to add all classes/functions/names that should be exposed into an __all__-list of the topmost __init__.py. It doesn't do that many useful things, its main purpose nowadays is a symbolic "please use this and nothing else". Yours would probably look somewhat like this:
urdu/urdu/__init__.py
from urdu.stemmer import Foo, Bar, Baz
__all__ = [Foo, Bar, Baz]
To emphasize the point, you can also give all definitions within stemmerUtil.py an underscore before their name, e.g. def privateFunc(): ... becomes def _privateFunc(): ...
But you can also just hide the code from the interpreter by making it a resource instead of a module within the package and loading it dynamically. This is a hack, and probably a bad idea, but it is technically possible.
First, you rename stemmerUtil.py to just stemmerUtil - now it is no longer a python module and can't be imported with the import keyword. Next, update this line in stemmer.py
import stemmerUtil
with
import importlib.util
import importlib.resources
# in python3.7 and lower, this is importlib_resources and needs to be installed first
stemmer_util_spec = importlib.util.spec_from_loader("stemmerUtil", loader=None)
stemmerUtil = importlib.util.module_from_spec(stemmer_util_spec)
with importlib.resources.path("urdu", "stemmerUtil") as stemmer_util_path:
with open(stemmer_util_path) as stemmer_util_file:
stemmer_util_code = stemmer_util_file.read()
exec(stemmer_util_code, stemmerUtil.__dict__)
After running this code, you can use the stemmerUtil module as if you had imported it, but it is invisible to anyone who installed your package - unless they run this exact code as well.
But as I said, if you just want to communicate to your users which part of your package is the public API, the first solution is vastly preferable.
Basically I have 3 modules that all communicate with eachother and import eachother's functions. I'm trying to import a function from my shigui.py module that creates a gui for the program. Now I have a function that gets the values of user entries in the gui and I want to pass them to the other module. I'm trying to pass the function below:
def valueget():
keywords = kw.get()
delay = dlay.get()
category = catg.get()
All imports go fine, up until I try to import this function with
from shigui import valueget to another module that would use the values. In fact, I can't import any function to any module from this file. Also I should add that they are in the same directory. I'm appreciative of any help on this matter.
Well, I am not entirely sure of what imports what, but here is what I can tell you. Python can sometimes allow for circular dependencies. However, it depends on what the layout of your dependencies is. First and foremost, I would say see if there is any way you can avoid this happening (restructuring your code, etc.). If it is unavoidable then there is one thing you can try. When Python imports modules, it does so in order of code execution. This means that if you have a definition before an import, you can sometimes access the definition in the first module by importing that first module in the second module. Let me give an example. Consider you have two modules, A and B.
A:
def someFunc():
# use B's functionality from before B's import of A
pass
import B
B:
def otherFunc():
# use A's functionality from before A's import of B
pass
import A
In a situation like that, Python will allow this. However, everything after the imports is not always fair game so be careful. You can read up on Python's module system more if you want to know why this works.
Helpful, but not complete link: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/modules.html
I have defined several classes in a single python file. My wish is to create a library with these. I would ideally like to import the library in such a way that I can use the classes without a prefix (like mylibrary.myclass() as opposed to just myclass() ), if that's what you can call them, I am not entirely sure as I am a beginner.
What is the proper way to achieve this, or the otherwise best result? Define all classes in __init __? Define them all in a single file as I currently have like AllMyClasses.py? Or should I have a separate file for every class in the library directory like FirstClass.py, SecondClass.py etc.
I realize this is a question that should be easy enough to google, but since I am still quite new to python and programming in general I haven't quite figured out what the correct keywords are for a problem in this context(such as my uncertainty about "prefix")
More information can be found in the tutorial on modules (single files) or packages (when in a directory with an __init__.py file) on the python site.
The suggested way (according to the style guide) is to spell out each class import specifically.
from my_module import MyClass1, MyClass2
object1 = MyClass1()
object2 = MyClass2()
While you can also shorten the module name:
import my_module as mo
object = mo.MyClass1()
Using from my_module import * is recommended to be avoided as it can be confusing (even if it is the recommended way for some things, like tkinter)
If it's for your personal use, you can just put all your classes Class1, Class2, ... in a myFile.py and to use them call import myFile (without the .py extension)
import myFile
myVar1 = myFile.Class1()
myVar2 = myFile.Class2()
from within another script. If you want to be able to use the classes without the file name prefix, import the file like this:
from myFile import *
Note that the file you want to import should be in a directory where Python can find it (the same where the script is running or a directory in PYTHONPATH).
The _init_ is needed if you want to create a Python module for distribution. Here are the instructions: Distributing Python Modules
EDIT after checking the Python's style guide PEP 8 on imports:
Wildcard imports (from import) should be avoided, as they make it unclear which names are present in the namespace, confusing both readers and many automated tools
So in this example you should have used
from myFile import Class1, Class2
I'm working on my first significant Python project and I'm having trouble with scope issues and executing code in included files. Previously my experience is with PHP.
What I would like to do is have one single file that sets up a number of configuration variables, which would then be used throughout the code. Also, I want to make certain functions and classes available globally. For example, the main file would include a single other file, and that file would load a bunch of commonly used functions (each in its own file) and a configuration file. Within those loaded files, I also want to be able to access the functions and configuration variables. What I don't want to do, is to have to put the entire routine at the beginning of each (included) file to include all of the rest. Also, these included files are in various sub-directories, which is making it much harder to import them (especially if I have to re-import in every single file).
Anyway I'm looking for general advice on the best way to structure the code to achieve what I want.
Thanks!
In python, it is a common practice to have a bunch of modules that implement various functions and then have one single module that is the point-of-access to all the functions. This is basically the facade pattern.
An example: say you're writing a package foo, which includes the bar, baz, and moo modules.
~/project/foo
~/project/foo/__init__.py
~/project/foo/bar.py
~/project/foo/baz.py
~/project/foo/moo.py
~/project/foo/config.py
What you would usually do is write __init__.py like this:
from foo.bar import func1, func2
from foo.baz import func3, constant1
from foo.moo import func1 as moofunc1
from foo.config import *
Now, when you want to use the functions you just do
import foo
foo.func1()
print foo.constant1
# assuming config defines a config1 variable
print foo.config1
If you wanted, you could arrange your code so that you only need to write
import foo
At the top of every module, and then access everything through foo (which you should probably name "globals" or something to that effect). If you don't like namespaces, you could even do
from foo import *
and have everything as global, but this is really not recommended. Remember: namespaces are one honking great idea!
This is a two-step process:
In your module globals.py import the items from wherever.
In all of your other modules, do "from globals import *"
This brings all of those names into the current module's namespace.
Now, having told you how to do this, let me suggest that you don't. First of all, you are loading up the local namespace with a bunch of "magically defined" entities. This violates precept 2 of the Zen of Python, "Explicit is better than implicit." Instead of "from foo import *", try using "import foo" and then saying "foo.some_value". If you want to use the shorter names, use "from foo import mumble, snort". Either of these methods directly exposes the actual use of the module foo.py. Using the globals.py method is just a little too magic. The primary exception to this is in an __init__.py where you are hiding some internal aspects of a package.
Globals are also semi-evil in that it can be very difficult to figure out who is modifying (or corrupting) them. If you have well-defined routines for getting/setting globals, then debugging them can be much simpler.
I know that PHP has this "everything is one, big, happy namespace" concept, but it's really just an artifact of poor language design.
As far as I know program-wide global variables/functions/classes/etc. does not exist in Python, everything is "confined" in some module (namespace). So if you want some functions or classes to be used in many parts of your code one solution is creating some modules like: "globFunCl" (defining/importing from elsewhere everything you want to be "global") and "config" (containing configuration variables) and importing those everywhere you need them. If you don't like idea of using nested namespaces you can use:
from globFunCl import *
This way you'll "hide" namespaces (making names look like "globals").
I'm not sure what you mean by not wanting to "put the entire routine at the beginning of each (included) file to include all of the rest", I'm afraid you can't really escape from this. Check out the Python Packages though, they should make it easier for you.
This depends a bit on how you want to package things up. You can either think in terms of files or modules. The latter is "more pythonic", and enables you to decide exactly which items (and they can be anything with a name: classes, functions, variables, etc.) you want to make visible.
The basic rule is that for any file or module you import, anything directly in its namespace can be accessed. So if myfile.py contains definitions def myfun(...): and class myclass(...) as well as myvar = ... then you can access them from another file by
import myfile
y = myfile.myfun(...)
x = myfile.myvar
or
from myfile import myfun, myvar, myclass
Crucially, anything at the top level of myfile is accessible, including imports. So if myfile contains from foo import bar, then myfile.bar is also available.