How to load all modules in a folder?

Question

Could someone provide me with a good way of importing a whole directory of modules?
I have a structure like this:

/Foo
    bar.py
    spam.py
    eggs.py         


        

Answer 1

Anurag Uniyal answer with suggested improvements!

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

import os
import glob

all_list = list()
for f in glob.glob(os.path.dirname(__file__)+"/*.py"):
    if os.path.isfile(f) and not os.path.basename(f).startswith('_'):
        all_list.append(os.path.basename(f)[:-3])

__all__ = all_list  

Answer 2

This is the best way i've found so far:

from os.path import dirname, join, isdir, abspath, basename
from glob import glob
pwd = dirname(__file__)
for x in glob(join(pwd, '*.py')):
    if not x.startswith('__'):
        __import__(basename(x)[:-3], globals(), locals())

Answer 3

I got tired of this problem myself, so I wrote a package called automodinit to fix it. You can get it from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/automodinit/.

Usage is like this:

1. Include the automodinit package into your setup.py dependencies.
2. Replace all __init__.py files like this:

__all__ = ["I will get rewritten"]
# Don't modify the line above, or this line!
import automodinit
automodinit.automodinit(__name__, __file__, globals())
del automodinit
# Anything else you want can go after here, it won't get modified.

That's it! From now on importing a module will set __all__ to a list of .py[co] files in the module and will also import each of those files as though you had typed:

for x in __all__: import x

Therefore the effect of "from M import *" matches exactly "import M".

automodinit is happy running from inside ZIP archives and is therefore ZIP safe.

Niall

Answer 4

I have also encountered this problem and this was my solution:

import os

def loadImports(path):
    files = os.listdir(path)
    imps = []

    for i in range(len(files)):
        name = files[i].split('.')
        if len(name) > 1:
            if name[1] == 'py' and name[0] != '__init__':
               name = name[0]
               imps.append(name)

    file = open(path+'__init__.py','w')

    toWrite = '__all__ = '+str(imps)

    file.write(toWrite)
    file.close()

This function creates a file (in the provided folder) named __init__.py, which contains an __all__ variable that holds every module in the folder.

For example, I have a folder named Test which contains:

Foo.py
Bar.py

So in the script I want the modules to be imported into I will write:

loadImports('Test/')
from Test import *

This will import everything from Test and the __init__.py file in Test will now contain:

__all__ = ['Foo','Bar']

Answer 5

Python, include all files under a directory:

For newbies who just can't get it to work who need their hands held.

1. Make a folder /home/el/foo and make a file main.py under /home/el/foo Put this code in there:

   from hellokitty import *
   spam.spamfunc()
   ham.hamfunc()
   

2. Make a directory /home/el/foo/hellokitty

3. Make a file __init__.py under /home/el/foo/hellokitty and put this code in there:

   __all__ = ["spam", "ham"]
   

4. Make two python files: spam.py and ham.py under /home/el/foo/hellokitty

5. Define a function inside spam.py:

   def spamfunc():
     print("Spammity spam")
   

6. Define a function inside ham.py:

   def hamfunc():
     print("Upgrade from baloney")
   

7. Run it:

   el@apollo:/home/el/foo$ python main.py 
   spammity spam
   Upgrade from baloney
   

Answer 6

See that your __init__.py defines __all__. The modules - packages doc says

The __init__.py files are required to make Python treat the directories as containing packages; this is done to prevent directories with a common name, such as string, from unintentionally hiding valid modules that occur later on the module search path. In the simplest case, __init__.py can just be an empty file, but it can also execute initialization code for the package or set the __all__ variable, described later.

...

The only solution is for the package author to provide an explicit index of the package. The import statement uses the following convention: if a package’s __init__.py code defines a list named __all__, it is taken to be the list of module names that should be imported when from package import * is encountered. It is up to the package author to keep this list up-to-date when a new version of the package is released. Package authors may also decide not to support it, if they don’t see a use for importing * from their package. For example, the file sounds/effects/__init__.py could contain the following code:

__all__ = ["echo", "surround", "reverse"]

This would mean that from sound.effects import * would import the three named submodules of the sound package.