As discussed here, we can dynamically import a module using string variable.
import importlib
importlib.import_module('os.path')
My question is how to import * from string variable?
Some thing like this not working for now
importlib.import_module('os.path.*')
You can do the following trick:
>>> import importlib
>>> globals().update(importlib.import_module('math').__dict__)
>>> sin
<built-in function sin>
Be warned that makes all names in the module available locally, so it is slightly different than * because it doesn't start with __all__ so for e.g. it will also override __name__, __package__, __loader__, __doc__.
Update:
Here is a more precise and safer version as @mata pointed out in comments:
module = importlib.import_module('math')
globals().update(
{n: getattr(module, n) for n in module.__all__} if hasattr(module, '__all__')
else
{k: v for (k, v) in module.__dict__.items() if not k.startswith('_')
})
Special thanks to Nam G VU for helping to make the answer more complete.
__name__, __package__, __loader__, __doc__ etc. which you definitely do not want imported.
if not k.startswith('_') would probably be better. The real import machinery when doing a * import also checks if the module has an __all__ attribute and only imports what is given there.__all__ to make it a bit short snippet but your advice is good enough also to hide functions start with _module = importlib.import_module('math'); globals().update({n: getattr(module, n) for n in module.__all__} if hasattr(module, '__all__') else {k: v for (k, v) in module.__dict__.items() if not k.startswith('_')}), only formatted nicer
*-imports are generally frowned upon, they clutter the namespace and you may end up importing things you did not intend (e.g. a module is updated, gets a new function that overrides an earlier import). Do you have a concrete usecase for doing this dynamically?import *sound dangerous; though it works for simple use case. My concrete usecase is that I'm trying to useproboscisto runpython testwhich allow me to pick up which test suit to run - the chosen test suit is defined by an array of test filenames.