Get Pycharm to see dynamically generated python modules

Question

Using Apache Airflow they install plugins by modifying sys.modules like this:

 sys.modules[operators_module.__name__] = operators_module

Which is how they get python classes from their plugins folder to be imported via

from airflow.operators.plugin_name import Operator

even though the class Operator exists inside

airflow/plugins/Operators.py

This makes it impossible for PyCharm to understand the above import statement because it is a non-traditional way of generating module/module name.

Is there any way to get PyCharm to have something like a module/package alias for situations like these?

Answer 1

If your plugin is in the same repository as the dag you can wrap you import in try-except block:

try:
   # local development
   from plugin_name import Operator
except ImportError:
   from airflow.operators.plugin_name import Operator

my_operator = Operator(...)

And mark plugins directory as sources in your PyCharm Project Structure.
Afterwards PyCharm picks up your plugin source code and works nicely with autocompletion and so on.