I'm trying to build some custom Python modules.
Even though I was able to use all modules. When I try to import a module other modules are being imported.
For example:
mod1.py
import os
import sys
def f(x):
return (x**2)
main.py
import mod1
dir(mod1.os)
how can I avoid this behaviour? The user should not be able to access the other modules from mod1. In this example os and sys.
Should I put the import statements inside the function? Are there other ways to prevent such thing?
The behavior you are seeing is perfectly normal.
Python does not hide elements quite so strongly as some other languages.
We're all adults here, and are expected to behave responsibly, without strong enforcement from the language.
Should I put the import statements inside the function?
No, your code is just fine the way it is.
If you plan to write a bunch of python code, you should follow the usual conventions that everyone else does, as shown in your example code. In main.py, if you want to access an os function, you should certainly import it there, rather than borrowing a reference from mod1.os.
I want my project to work in two different situations. It should work as a standalone library, but also as sub package of a larger project. The main use case is that of a standalone library, where its internal imports should be of the form
from my_library import sub_package
When using the code as sub package of a larger project, these imports don't work as there is no global name my_library. Instead, I would have to use relative or absolute imports, for example
from large_project.my_library import sub_package
Let's assume I wrote my library as shown in the first example. How can I overwrite importing behavior when running as part of a larger project to automatically adjust import paths?
Thanks to #MatrixTai's suggestion of adding the parent directory of the package to the the module path, I came up with this dynamic solution. At the top of my_library/__init__.py:
# Make package global even if used as a sub package to enable short imports.
import os
import sys
sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__)))
We have to navigate up two directories here to do from the my_library/__init__.py to my_library and from there to its parent direction, where imports will find the library.
You don't have much choice.
If you want to reference the my_library.py anywhere, there is 2 method (as I known) can do similar work.
1: add system path. Like those module you installed by pip. pip module is installed in /Python/Scripts. You can add a new path or simply put my_library.py into one of the path. For adding, that's in Computer(right-click)-> Properties -> Environment Variable -> Choose Path and Click Edit
(Though you may not want to use this.)
2: Changing __init__.py, but still at least one line you must add in my_library.py.
For example,
/Directory
/large_project
-__init__.py #call this sub_init
-my_library.py
-__init__.py #call this main_init, this fake
-main.py
In main_init,
import sys
sys.path.append('\\Directory\\large_project')
As main_init is not executed when you execute main.py (this is fake), so in main.py
import __init__
from my_library import sub_package
But as well you can take this main_init as the starter of library, like declaring __all__, etc.
I've run into a bit of a wall importing modules in a Python script. I'll do my best to describe the error, why I run into it, and why I'm tying this particular approach to solve my problem (which I will describe in a second):
Let's suppose I have a module in which I've defined some utility functions/classes, which refer to entities defined in the namespace into which this auxiliary module will be imported (let "a" be such an entity):
module1:
def f():
print a
And then I have the main program, where "a" is defined, into which I want to import those utilities:
import module1
a=3
module1.f()
Executing the program will trigger the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Z:\Python\main.py", line 10, in <module>
module1.f()
File "Z:\Python\module1.py", line 3, in f
print a
NameError: global name 'a' is not defined
Similar questions have been asked in the past (two days ago, d'uh) and several solutions have been suggested, however I don't really think these fit my requirements. Here's my particular context:
I'm trying to make a Python program which connects to a MySQL database server and displays/modifies data with a GUI. For cleanliness sake, I've defined the bunch of auxiliary/utility MySQL-related functions in a separate file. However they all have a common variable, which I had originally defined inside the utilities module, and which is the cursor object from MySQLdb module.
I later realised that the cursor object (which is used to communicate with the db server) should be defined in the main module, so that both the main module and anything that is imported into it can access that object.
End result would be something like this:
utilities_module.py:
def utility_1(args):
code which references a variable named "cur"
def utility_n(args):
etcetera
And my main module:
program.py:
import MySQLdb, Tkinter
db=MySQLdb.connect(#blahblah) ; cur=db.cursor() #cur is defined!
from utilities_module import *
And then, as soon as I try to call any of the utilities functions, it triggers the aforementioned "global name not defined" error.
A particular suggestion was to have a "from program import cur" statement in the utilities file, such as this:
utilities_module.py:
from program import cur
#rest of function definitions
program.py:
import Tkinter, MySQLdb
db=MySQLdb.connect(#blahblah) ; cur=db.cursor() #cur is defined!
from utilities_module import *
But that's cyclic import or something like that and, bottom line, it crashes too. So my question is:
How in hell can I make the "cur" object, defined in the main module, visible to those auxiliary functions which are imported into it?
Thanks for your time and my deepest apologies if the solution has been posted elsewhere. I just can't find the answer myself and I've got no more tricks in my book.
Globals in Python are global to a module, not across all modules. (Many people are confused by this, because in, say, C, a global is the same across all implementation files unless you explicitly make it static.)
There are different ways to solve this, depending on your actual use case.
Before even going down this path, ask yourself whether this really needs to be global. Maybe you really want a class, with f as an instance method, rather than just a free function? Then you could do something like this:
import module1
thingy1 = module1.Thingy(a=3)
thingy1.f()
If you really do want a global, but it's just there to be used by module1, set it in that module.
import module1
module1.a=3
module1.f()
On the other hand, if a is shared by a whole lot of modules, put it somewhere else, and have everyone import it:
import shared_stuff
import module1
shared_stuff.a = 3
module1.f()
… and, in module1.py:
import shared_stuff
def f():
print shared_stuff.a
Don't use a from import unless the variable is intended to be a constant. from shared_stuff import a would create a new a variable initialized to whatever shared_stuff.a referred to at the time of the import, and this new a variable would not be affected by assignments to shared_stuff.a.
Or, in the rare case that you really do need it to be truly global everywhere, like a builtin, add it to the builtin module. The exact details differ between Python 2.x and 3.x. In 3.x, it works like this:
import builtins
import module1
builtins.a = 3
module1.f()
As a workaround, you could consider setting environment variables in the outer layer, like this.
main.py:
import os
os.environ['MYVAL'] = str(myintvariable)
mymodule.py:
import os
myval = None
if 'MYVAL' in os.environ:
myval = os.environ['MYVAL']
As an extra precaution, handle the case when MYVAL is not defined inside the module.
This post is just an observation for Python behaviour I encountered. Maybe the advices you read above don't work for you if you made the same thing I did below.
Namely, I have a module which contains global/shared variables (as suggested above):
#sharedstuff.py
globaltimes_randomnode=[]
globalist_randomnode=[]
Then I had the main module which imports the shared stuff with:
import sharedstuff as shared
and some other modules that actually populated these arrays. These are called by the main module. When exiting these other modules I can clearly see that the arrays are populated. But when reading them back in the main module, they were empty. This was rather strange for me (well, I am new to Python). However, when I change the way I import the sharedstuff.py in the main module to:
from globals import *
it worked (the arrays were populated).
Just sayin'
A function uses the globals of the module it's defined in. Instead of setting a = 3, for example, you should be setting module1.a = 3. So, if you want cur available as a global in utilities_module, set utilities_module.cur.
A better solution: don't use globals. Pass the variables you need into the functions that need it, or create a class to bundle all the data together, and pass it when initializing the instance.
The easiest solution to this particular problem would have been to add another function within the module that would have stored the cursor in a variable global to the module. Then all the other functions could use it as well.
module1:
cursor = None
def setCursor(cur):
global cursor
cursor = cur
def method(some, args):
global cursor
do_stuff(cursor, some, args)
main program:
import module1
cursor = get_a_cursor()
module1.setCursor(cursor)
module1.method()
Since globals are module specific, you can add the following function to all imported modules, and then use it to:
Add singular variables (in dictionary format) as globals for those
Transfer your main module globals to it
.
addglobals = lambda x: globals().update(x)
Then all you need to pass on current globals is:
import module
module.addglobals(globals())
Since I haven't seen it in the answers above, I thought I would add my simple workaround, which is just to add a global_dict argument to the function requiring the calling module's globals, and then pass the dict into the function when calling; e.g:
# external_module
def imported_function(global_dict=None):
print(global_dict["a"])
# calling_module
a = 12
from external_module import imported_function
imported_function(global_dict=globals())
>>> 12
The OOP way of doing this would be to make your module a class instead of a set of unbound methods. Then you could use __init__ or a setter method to set the variables from the caller for use in the module methods.
Update
To test the theory, I created a module and put it on pypi. It all worked perfectly.
pip install superglobals
Short answer
This works fine in Python 2 or 3:
import inspect
def superglobals():
_globals = dict(inspect.getmembers(
inspect.stack()[len(inspect.stack()) - 1][0]))["f_globals"]
return _globals
save as superglobals.py and employ in another module thusly:
from superglobals import *
superglobals()['var'] = value
Extended Answer
You can add some extra functions to make things more attractive.
def superglobals():
_globals = dict(inspect.getmembers(
inspect.stack()[len(inspect.stack()) - 1][0]))["f_globals"]
return _globals
def getglobal(key, default=None):
"""
getglobal(key[, default]) -> value
Return the value for key if key is in the global dictionary, else default.
"""
_globals = dict(inspect.getmembers(
inspect.stack()[len(inspect.stack()) - 1][0]))["f_globals"]
return _globals.get(key, default)
def setglobal(key, value):
_globals = superglobals()
_globals[key] = value
def defaultglobal(key, value):
"""
defaultglobal(key, value)
Set the value of global variable `key` if it is not otherwise st
"""
_globals = superglobals()
if key not in _globals:
_globals[key] = value
Then use thusly:
from superglobals import *
setglobal('test', 123)
defaultglobal('test', 456)
assert(getglobal('test') == 123)
Justification
The "python purity league" answers that litter this question are perfectly correct, but in some environments (such as IDAPython) which is basically single threaded with a large globally instantiated API, it just doesn't matter as much.
It's still bad form and a bad practice to encourage, but sometimes it's just easier. Especially when the code you are writing isn't going to have a very long life.
I am a new comer when it comes to package and module to python.
I am trying to cut my script in several separate compartiment. to improve readability and maintenance.
My problem is the following:
I have a module which define a class and a function inside this module which instantiate this class.
module blast.py
class Blast():
blabla
def foo():
blast = Blast()
# do some stuff
this module is inside a package with a _ _init__.py file
__all__ = ["blast"]
I have a main script In which i want to use that function.
I import the module with
from package import blast
But To use that function I have to use the name space of the module ( at least my IDE say me that: pycharm)
blast.foo()
So does it works? does the function will see the class inside it module?
And more generally Could I import some function of my package inside my namespace. I though it was done this way and answer I got from internet doesn't really help me.
Yes, the function blast.foo() would know and find the class Blast.
Whenever you import a module, in part or in its entirety, the entire module is loaded - the way you import it merely decides on what classes and functions are available in the current scope, and in what way.
For example, if you call this:
from package.blast import foo
only the function foo() would be available, but the entire package read and loaded. if you were to try instantiate the class Blast by itself in the same script, this would not work.
By the way, you can make importing functions more convenient, if you customize __init__.py. In your case, if you were to edit it like so:
>>>__init__.py
from blast.py import Blast, foo
you can import both function and class like so:
from package import Blast, foo
The reason why you __all__ parameter does not work, is because it requires another import statement - mainly this:
from package import *
Calling this with your current __init__.py should work as expected.
Perhaps this post by Mike Grouchy is able to clarify things a bit more.
I have the following structure:
ds/
BST.py
BSTNode.py
When I do
from .BSTNode import BSTNode
inside BST.py, and I run from the IDLE BST.py from within ds I receive the following error:
SystemError: Parent module '' not loaded, cannot perform relative import
Why am I receiving it? Note that I am not asking how to fix the problem, because it would work if I simply do
from BSTNode import BSTNode
i.e. without the leading .. I just want to understand better how the Python's import system works.
Note that theoretically I should not need any __init__.py within ds because I am using Python 3.5. If I am not clear enough, just ask!
Thank you!!!!