Importing a module based on installed python version?

Question

My module currently imports the json module, which is only available in 2.6. I'd like to make a check against the python version to import simplejson, which can be built for 2.5 (and is the module adopted in 2.6 anyway). Something like:

if __version__ 2.5:
    import simplejson as json
else:
    import json

What's the best way to approach this?

Answer 1

try:
    import simplejson as json
except ImportError:
    import json

of course, it doesn't work around cases when in python-2.5 you don't have simplejson installed, the same as your example.