Import a package defined by a variable

Question

I want to do some package import timing tests. For this, I want to define a list of packages:

packages = [ 'random', 'dateutils', ... ]

for package in packages:
    import package

This is of course not working because import tries to import package "package". How can I tell import to import the package pointed to by the variable "package"?

Answer 1

for package in packages:
    package = __import__(package)

Note that if you are importing a module from a package, such as A.B,

__import__('A.B') returns package A, but __import__('A.B', fromlist = [True]) returns module B.

Answer 2

Read the description of "__import__" method in the manual may be helpful for you.