How do I execute a string containing Python code in Python?

Question

How do I execute a string containing Python code in Python?

Answer 1

Ok .. I know this isn't exactly an answer, but possibly a note for people looking at this as I was. I wanted to execute specific code for different users/customers but also wanted to avoid the exec/eval. I initially looked to storing the code in a database for each user and doing the above.

I ended up creating the files on the file system within a 'customer_filters' folder and using the 'imp' module, if no filter applied for that customer, it just carried on

import imp


def get_customer_module(customerName='default', name='filter'):
    lm = None
    try:
        module_name = customerName+"_"+name;
        m = imp.find_module(module_name, ['customer_filters'])
        lm = imp.load_module(module_name, m[0], m[1], m[2])
    except:
        ''
        #ignore, if no module is found, 
    return lm

m = get_customer_module(customerName, "filter")
if m is not None:
    m.apply_address_filter(myobj)

so customerName = "jj" would execute apply_address_filter from the customer_filters\jj_filter.py file