Question

Say there is a folder, ‘/home/user/temp/a40bd22344’. The name is completely random and changes in every iteration. I need to be able to import this folder in Python using a fixed name, say ‘project’. I know I can add this folder to sys.path to enable import lookup, but is there a way to replace ‘a40bd22344’ with ‘project’?

Maybe some clever hacks in init.py?

Added:

It needs to be global – that is, other scripts loading ‘project’ via the standard:

import project

Have to work properly, loading a40bd22344 instead.

Answer 1

You first import it with import:

>>> __import__('temp/a40bd22344')
<module 'temp/a40bd22344' from 'temp/a40bd22344/__init__.py'>

Then you make sure that this module gets known to Python as project:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.modules['project'] = sys.modules.pop('temp/a40bd22344')

After this, anything importing project in the current Python session will get the original module

>>> import project
>>> project
<module 'temp/a40bd22344' from 'temp/a40bd22344/__init__.py'>

This will work also for sub-modules: if you have a foobar.py in the same location you’ll get

>>> import project.foobar
>>> project.foobar
<module 'project.foobar' from 'temp/a40bd22344/foobar.py'>

Addendum. Here’s what I’m running:

>>> print sys.version
2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jul 31 2008, 17:28:52) 
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)]