In Google's Colab notebook, How do I call a function from a Python file?

Question

From a Colab notebook, I would like to call a python function that I wrote in a separate python file. How do I do that?

Answer 1

Edit: If you would like to import a local module, you'll want to edit your sys.path to point to that new directory. Here's an example notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1PtYW0hZit-B9y4PL978kV2ppJJPhjQua

Original reply: Sure, here's an example notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1KBrq8aAiy8vYIIUiTb5UHG9GKOdEMF3n

There are two cells: the first defines a .py file with a function to be imported.

%%writefile example.py
def f():
  print 'This is a function defined in a Python source file.'

The second cell uses execfile to evaluate that .py file in the notebook's Python interpreter.

# Bring the file into the local Python environment.
execfile('example.py')

# Call the function defined in the file.
f()

Answer 2

Please, try this function to Import a function from your drive to your colab notebook:

from google.colab import files
import zipfile, io, os

def upload_dir_file(case_f):
    # author: yasser mustafa, 21 March 2018  
    # case_f = 0 for uploading one File or Package(.py) and case_f = 1 for uploading one Zipped Directory
    uploaded = files.upload()    # to upload a Full Directory, please Zip it first (use WinZip)
    for fn in uploaded.keys():
        name = fn  #.encode('utf-8')
        #print('\nfile after encode', name)
        #name = io.BytesIO(uploaded[name])
    if case_f == 0:    # case of uploading 'One File only'
        print('\n file name: ', name)
        return name
    else:   # case of uploading a directory and its subdirectories and files
        zfile = zipfile.ZipFile(name, 'r')   # unzip the directory 
        zfile.extractall()
        for d in zfile.namelist():   # d = directory
            print('\n main directory name: ', d)
            return d
print('Done!')

Then follow the following two steps: 1- If you have a file called (package_name.py), to upload it to your colab notebook call:

file_name = upload_dir_file(0)

2- Then, import your package:

import package_name

Note: you can use the same function to: 1- uploading file(csv, excel, pdf, ....):

file_name = upload_dir_file(0)

2- uploading Directory and its subdirectories and files:

dir_name = upload_dir_file(1)

Enjoy it!