Importing custom module into jupyter notebook

Question

Yes, I know this is a recurrent question but I still couldn't find a convincing answer. I even read at https://chrisyeh96.github.io/2017/08/08/definitive-guide-python-imports.html but could not find out how to solve the problem:

I'm running python 3.6 project that includes jupyter (ipython) notebooks. I want the notebook to import a custom local helpers.py package that I will probably use also later in other sources.

The project structure is similar to:

my_project/ │ ├── my_project/ │   ├── notebooks/ │       └── a_notebook.ipynb │   ├── __init__.py     # suppose to make package `my_project` importable │   └── helpers.py │ ├── tests/ │   └── helpers_tests.py │ ├── .gitignore ├── LICENSE ├── README.md ├── requirements.txt └── setup.py 

When importing helpers in the notebook I get the error:

----> 4 import helpers  ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'helpers' 

I also tried from my_project import helpers and I get the same error ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'my_project'

I finally (and temporarily) used the usual trick:

import sys sys.path.append('..') import helpers 

But it looks awful and I'm still looking for a better solution

Answer 1

One can tell python where to look for modules via sys.path. I have a project structure like this:

project/     │     ├── src/     │    └── my_module/     │        ├── __init__.py            │        └── helpers.py     ├── notebooks/     │   └── a_notebook.ipynb     ... 

I was able to load the module like so:

import sys sys.path.append('../src/')  from my_module import helpers 

One should be able load the module from wherever they have it.