TIL: A Python module from which you can import anything
Today I learnt how to make a Python module from which you can import anything.
Yuvi asked if you
can write a Python module that will allow anything to be imported from it. A bit
like from idealmock import whatever, does_not_exist.
I thought "how hard can it be?" and off I went to find out.
The answer is that it is not very hard to do. I first read about the import
machinery of Python, learnt
a bit about importlib and
in the end the solution had nothing to do with all that.
It is surprisingly simple:
def __getattr__(name):
pass
If you put this code in your module, say blackhole.py you can import
anything you want from it: from blackhole import something, does_not_exist
or you can import the whole module and then access anything you want:
import blackhole; blackhole.something.
It is pretty neat.
If you want to learn more about module level __getattr__ and some real world
use cases checkout PEP 562 -- Module __getattr__ and __dir__
which has a nice trick for dealing with deprecated functions in it.