Question

Python 2.7 comes with json library included. In my PYTHONPATH I include third party sources and one of them is also called json. The result ending up with loaded the wrong json library. What would be a good practice to handle and avoid situations like above? Is there a way to instruct Python to explicitly load the native library in this fashion from ? import json.

Answer 1

You could try

from path import json as anotherjson

This way the namespace conflict can be removed.

Also you can see the discussions about relative/absolute import.

• http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.5.html#pep-328

It says :

In Python 2.5, you can switch import‘s behaviour to absolute imports
using a from future import absolute_import directive. This
absolute- import behaviour will become the default in a future version
(probably Python 2.7). Once absolute imports are the default, import
string will always find the standard library’s version. It’s suggested
that users should begin using absolute imports as much as possible.

from __future__ import absolute_import
# from standard path
import json as _json 
# from a package
from pkg import json as pkgjson

The other technique is to use the imp module

import imp
json = imp.load_source('json', '/path/to/json.py')