Question

In the process of learning Django and Python. I can’t make sense of this.

(Example Notes:’helloworld’ is the name of my project. It has 1 app called ‘app’.)

from helloworld.views import *          # <<-- this works
from helloworld import views            # <<-- this doesn't work
from helloworld.app import views        # <<-- but this works.  why?

It seems like line #2 and #3 are practically the same. Why does like #2 not work?

Edit — Added the source of the two files.
You might recognize this code from the Django Book project (http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0)

helloworld/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.http import HttpResponse, Http404
import datetime

def hello(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello world")


def current_datetime(request):
    current_date = datetime.datetime.now()
    return render_to_response('current_datetime.html', locals())


def offset_datetime(request, offset):
    try:
        offset = int(offset)
    except ValueError:
        raise Http404()

    next_time = datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(hours=offset)
    return render_to_response('offset_datetime.html', locals())

def display_meta(request):
    values = request.META.items()
    values.sort()
    path = request.path
    return render_to_response('metavalues.html', locals())

helloworld/app/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response

def search_form(request):
    return render_to_response('search_form.html')

def search(request):
    if 'q' in request.GET:
        message = 'You searched for: %r' % request.GET['q']
    else:
        message = 'You searched for nothing.'

    return render_to_response('search_results.html', locals())

Answer 1

Python imports can import two different kinds of things: modules and objects.

import x

Imports an entire module named x.

import x.y

Imports a module named y and it’s container x. You refer to x.y.

When you created it, however, you created this directory structure

x
    __init__.py
    y.py

When you add to the import statement, you identify specific objects to pull from the module and move into the global namespace

import x # the module as a whole
x.a # Must pick items out of the module
x.b

from x import a, b # two things lifted out of the module
a # items are global
b

If helloworld is a package (a directory, with an __init__.py file), it typically doesn’t contain any objects.

from x import y # isn't sensible
import x.y # importing a whole module.

Sometimes, you will have objects defined in the __init__.py file.

Generally, use “from module import x” to pick specific objects out of a module.

Use import module to import an entire module.