Importing files from different folder

Question

I have the following folder structure.

application ├── app │   └── folder │       └── file.py └── app2     └── some_folder         └── some_file.py 

I want to import some functions from file.py in some_file.py.

I've tried

from application.app.folder.file import func_name 

and some other various attempts but so far I couldn't manage to import properly. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Note: This answer was intended for a very specific question. For most programmers coming here from a search engine, this is not the answer you are looking for. Typically you would structure your files into packages (see other answers) instead of modifying the search path.

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By default, you can't. When importing a file, Python only searches the directory that the entry-point script is running from and sys.path which includes locations such as the package installation directory (it's actually a little more complex than this, but this covers most cases).

However, you can add to the Python path at runtime:

# some_file.py import sys # insert at 1, 0 is the script path (or '' in REPL) sys.path.insert(1, '/path/to/application/app/folder')  import file 

Answer 2

Nothing wrong with:

from application.app.folder.file import func_name 

Just make sure folder also contains an __init__.py, this allows it to be included as a package. Not sure why the other answers talk about PYTHONPATH.