Another absolute import problem

Question

I'm having problems with my own modules overriding built in Python ones (specifically the logging module). Here's my project layout:

run.py
package/
        __init__.py
        logging/
                __init__.py
        ...

run.py

from package import main

main()

package/__init__.py

from __future__ import absolute_import
import logging
import logging.config

def main():
    logging.config.fileConfig(...)

package/logging/__init__.py

class Logging(object):
    pass

As it stands right now, the above code works. As soon as I try to import the Logging class from package.logging like so:

from __future__ import absolute_import

import logging
import logging.config
from package.logging import Logging

def main():
    logging.config.fileConfig(...)

I get an error:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'config'

I've read the PEP 328 release notes and found absolute imports to be rather straightforward. Unfortunately I haven't been able to figure this one out.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Relative and absolute imports (PEP 328) are not the problem here.

What happens is that when a module in a package is imported, it is implicitly added to this package's namespace. So

from package.logging import Logging

not only adds 'Logging' to package._dict_, but also adds 'logging' (the newly import local module) to package._dict_. So you first import logging (the top-level module) and it is available as package.logging, and then you overwrite this variable with the local module. This basically means that you cannot have a package.logging to access the top-level module and your local module, as expected.

In this specific case, you probably don't want to "export" the top-level logging module as a public name. Instead do:

from logging import config as _config
def main():
    _config.fileConfig(...)