Pass Variable On Import

Question

Let\'s say you have some time-consuming work to do when a module/class is first imported. This functionality is dependent on a passed in variable. It only needs to be done

Answer 1

There is no way to pass a variable at import.

Some ideas:

• make the module get the variable from the calling module using inspection; not very pythonic
• use an Init function for the module, this is the best way

Answer 2

Couple of other options that can achieve your goal (although a init() function is probably cleaner):

• Use an environment variable
• Use a separate module M to hold this variable, that the importer would set. Then the imported module could either know where to find M, or could rely on sys.meta_path to obtain it.