I want to import some package depending on which value the user chooses.
The default is file1.py
:
from files import file1
If user chooses file2
, it should be :
from files import file2
In PHP, I can do this using variable variables:
$file_name = 'file1';
include($$file_name);
$file_name = 'file2';
include($$file_name);
How can I do this in Python?
Python doesn't have a feature that's directly equivalent to PHP's "variable variables". To get a "variable variable"'s value (or the value of any other expression) you can use the eval
function.
foo = "Hello World"
print eval("foo")
However, this can't be used in an import
statement.
It is possible to use the __import__
function to import using a variable.
package = "os"
name = "path"
imported = getattr(__import__(package, fromlist=[name]), name)
is equivalent to
from os import path as imported
Old thread, but I needed the answer, so someone else still might...
There's a cleaner way to do this in Python 2.7+:
import importlib
my_module = importlib.import_module("package.path.%s" % module_name)
As Fredrik Lundh states:
Anyway, here’s how these statements and functions work:
import X
imports the module X, and creates a reference to that module
in the current namespace. Or in other words, after you’ve run this
statement, you can use X.name
to refer to things defined in module X.
from X import *
imports the module X, and creates references in the
current namespace to all public objects defined by that module (that
is, everything that doesn’t have a name starting with “_”). Or in
other words, after you’ve run this statement, you can simply use a
plain name to refer to things defined in module X. But X itself is not
defined, so X.name
doesn’t work. And if name was already defined, it
is replaced by the new version. And if name in X is changed to point
to some other object, your module won’t notice.
from X import a, b, c
imports the module X, and creates references in
the current namespace to the given objects. Or in other words, you can
now use a
and b
and c
in your program.
Finally, X = __import__(‘X’)
works like import X
, with the difference
that you 1) pass the module name as a string, and 2) explicitly assign
it to a variable in your current namespace.
And by the way that's the last one method that you're intrested in.
Simply write (for example):
var = "datetime"
module = __import__(var)
It's probably a very bad idea to let the user choose what to import. Packages can execute code on import, so you're effectively allowing a user to arbitrarily execute code on your system! Much safer to do something like
if user_input == 'file1.py':
from files import file1 as file
elif user_input == 'file2.py':
from files import file2 as file
else:
file = None
print "Sorry, you can't import that file"
Basing myself on mattjbray
's answer:
from importlib import import_module
# lookup in a set is in constant time
safe_names = {"file1.py", "file2.py", "file3.py", ...}
user_input = ...
if user_input in safe_names:
file = import_module(user_input)
else:
print("Nope, not doing this.")
Saves a few lines of code, and allows you to set safe_names
programmatically, or load multiple modules and assign them to a dict, for example.