Python: How do I disallow imports of a class from a module?

Question

I tried:

__all__ = ['SpamPublicClass']

But, of course that's just for:

from spammodule import *

Is there a way to block importing of a class. I'm worried about confusion on the API level of my code that somebody will write:

from spammodule import SimilarSpamClass

and it'll cause debugging mayhem.

Answer 1

The convention is to use a _ as a prefix:

class PublicClass(object):
    pass

class _PrivateClass(object):
    pass

The following:

from module import *

Will not import the _PrivateClass.

But this will not prevent them from importing it. They could still import it explicitly.

from module import _PrivateClass