import module from string variable

Question

The __import__ function can be a bit hard to understand.

If you change

i = __import__('matplotlib.text')

to

i = __import__('matplotlib.text', fromlist=[''])

then i will refer to matplotlib.text.

In Python 2.7 and Python 3.1 or later, you can use importlib:

import importlib

i = importlib.import_module("matplotlib.text")

Some notes

• If you're trying to import something from a sub-folder e.g. ./feature/email.py, the code will look like importlib.import_module("feature.email")

• You can't import anything if there is no __init__.py in the folder with file you are trying to import

importlib.import_module is what you are looking for. It returns the imported module.

import importlib

mymodule = importlib.import_module('matplotlib.text')

You can thereafter access anything in the module as mymodule.myclass, mymodule.myfunction, etc.

spent some time trying to import modules from a list, and this is the thread that got me most of the way there - but I didnt grasp the use of ___import____ -

so here's how to import a module from a string, and get the same behavior as just import. And try/except the error case, too. :)

  pipmodules = ['pycurl', 'ansible', 'bad_module_no_beer']
  for module in pipmodules:
      try:
          # because we want to import using a variable, do it this way
          module_obj = __import__(module)
          # create a global object containging our module
          globals()[module] = module_obj
      except ImportError:
          sys.stderr.write("ERROR: missing python module: " + module + "\n")
          sys.exit(1)

and yes, for python 2.7> you have other options - but for 2.6<, this works.

Apart from using the importlib one can also use exec method to import a module from a string variable.

Here I am showing an example of importing the combinations method from itertools package using the exec method:

MODULES = [
    ['itertools','combinations'],
]

for ITEM in MODULES:
    import_str = "from {0} import {1}".format(ITEM[0],', '.join(str(i) for i in ITEM[1:]))
    exec(import_str)

ar = list(combinations([1, 2, 3, 4], 2))
for elements in ar:
    print(elements)

Output:

(1, 2)
(1, 3)
(1, 4)
(2, 3)
(2, 4)
(3, 4)

I developed these 3 useful functions:

def loadModule(moduleName):
    module = None
    try:
        import sys
        del sys.modules[moduleName]
    except BaseException as err:
        pass
    try:
        import importlib
        module = importlib.import_module(moduleName)
    except BaseException as err:
        serr = str(err)
        print("Error to load the module '" + moduleName + "': " + serr)
    return module

def reloadModule(moduleName):
    module = loadModule(moduleName)
    moduleName, modulePath = str(module).replace("' from '", "||").replace("<module '", '').replace("'>", '').split("||")
    if (modulePath.endswith(".pyc")):
        import os
        os.remove(modulePath)
        module = loadModule(moduleName)
    return module

def getInstance(moduleName, param1, param2, param3):
    module = reloadModule(moduleName)
    instance = eval("module." + moduleName + "(param1, param2, param3)")
    return instance

And everytime I want to reload a new instance I just have to call getInstance() like this:

myInstance = getInstance("MyModule", myParam1, myParam2, myParam3)

Finally I can call all the functions inside the new Instance:

myInstance.aFunction()

The only specificity here is to customize the params list (param1, param2, param3) of your instance.