How to import a module given its name as string?

Question

I\'m writing a Python application that takes as a command as an argument, for example:

$ python myapp.py command1

I want the application to

Answer 1

With Python older than 2.7/3.1, that's pretty much how you do it.

For newer versions, see importlib.import_module for Python 2 and and Python 3.

You can use exec if you want to as well.

Or using __import__ you can import a list of modules by doing this:

>>> moduleNames = ['sys', 'os', 're', 'unittest'] 
>>> moduleNames
['sys', 'os', 're', 'unittest']
>>> modules = map(__import__, moduleNames)

Ripped straight from Dive Into Python.