I have a Python module called my_module.py in a folder ~/my_module. I want to call this module from a Python interpreter and I don’t know its directory. I run:
import os
os.chdir(os.path.expanduser("~/my_module"))
import my_module
and it fails. But if I use from ... import ..., then it works:
import os
os.chdir(os.path.expanduser("~/my_module"))
from my_module import my_module
If I change the folder’s name to be different from the module’s name, then the direct import works. Why is that?
5
Files in the folder are not available in the module by default.
When you type import xyz in your code, one of two things can happen:
- There’s a file
xyz.py, then this file will be imported - There’s a folder named
xyz, then the file__init__.pyinside that folder will be imported
Other files than __init__.py aren’t imported by default. If you want to keep your file structure like this, you should add a file __init__.py in your my_module folder and put the following content inside it:
from . import my_module
from . means that python will look for the file in your current directory. Then, when calling import my_module in your main file, my_module will have an attribute my_module which holds everything defined in my_module/my_module.py.
(you should think about renaming this…)
However, this only makes sense if the my_module folder is gonna hold multiple submodule files that do their stuff. If it’s just one important file, you should not try to import it from the my_module folder, but rather put in one file and then add the folder where that file is to your path using sys.path.append("path/to/whatever"). os.chdir is not the option of choice here.
Please tell me if anything is unclear