Question

The code works but looks messy so this might be a code review question where I didn’t study enough of pythons conventions to know how to structure and organize the beginning of my file more pythonic. I basically just pasted in imports so they could be duplicates, not needed anymore or wrongly ordered. Can you advice anything how to structure my imports or can I leave code like this to focus on my own functions?

File 1:

from __future__ import with_statement
import logging
import os
from google.appengine.api.users import is_current_user_admin, UserNotFoundError
import time
import cgi
import geo.geotypes
import main
import captcha
from google.appengine import api
from google.appengine.runtime import DeadlineExceededError
from google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app
from google.appengine.ext.blobstore import BlobInfo
from google.appengine.ext.db import djangoforms
from django import forms
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
from django.utils import translation
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'conf.settings'
from django.conf import settings
from django.template import RequestContext
from util import I18NHandler
import util
from google.appengine.api import urlfetch, taskqueue
from django.template.defaultfilters import register
from django.utils import simplejson as json
from functools import wraps
from google.appengine.api import urlfetch, taskqueue, users, images
from google.appengine.ext import db, webapp, search, blobstore
from google.appengine.ext.webapp import util, template
from google.appengine.runtime import DeadlineExceededError
from random import randrange
import Cookie
import base64
import cgi
import conf
import datetime
import hashlib
import hmac
import logging
import time
import traceback
import urllib
import twitter_oauth_handler
from twitter_oauth_handler import OAuthClient
from geo.geomodel import GeoModel
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _
webapp.template.register_template_library('common.templatefilters')

File 2 (there’s are several instructions here I don’t understand):

from __future__ import with_statement
                # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import facebookconf
import os, wsgiref.handlers
os.environ[u'DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = u'conf'
import util
import time
import logging
import urllib
import wsgiref.handlers
import appengine_admin
import cgi
import captcha
import re
import hashlib
import string
import hmac
import twitter_oauth_handler
from twitter_oauth_handler import OAuthClient
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'conf.settings'
from geo.geomodel import GeoModel
from google.appengine.dist import use_library
from google.appengine.ext import blobstore, webapp, db, search
# template import must be run before other Django modules imports
from google.appengine.ext.webapp import blobstore_handlers, util, template
from google.appengine.ext.blobstore import BlobInfo
from google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app
from google.appengine.api import files, images, mail, memcache, users
from django.conf import settings
# Force Django reload
settings._target = None
from util import I18NHandler, FacebookBaseHandler
from google.appengine.ext.db import djangoforms
from django.utils import translation
from django.utils import simplejson as json
from django.contrib.formtools.preview import FormPreview
from random import choice
from urllib import quote
from google.appengine.api.users import is_current_user_admin, UserNotFoundError
from google.appengine.api import urlfetch
import random
import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _
from django.template import defaultfilters

How do I know when an import is no longer used since the function was moved or removed? Why can’t I specify the same import for multiple files at one place and I must spec the same import in both files? I can imagine moveing handling imports to a separate file i.e. imports.yaml to specify imports for all python files in that directory or likewise.

Answer 1

Once you’ve used pylint to identify duplicate and unused imports, and organized them according to PEP8 as the other answers suggest, you can further clean it up by changing the way you import packages.

Instead of

from google.appengine.api import urlfetch, taskqueue, users, images

you could just do

from google.appengine import api

then you would need to put “api.urlfetch”, “api.taskqueue”, etc. wherever you use those.

This isn’t the “right” way to do it, it’s just another way. You’ll have to choose which one you prefer.

Also note that you can use aliases:

from google.appengine import api as gaeapi

now you would put “gaeapi.urlfetch”. This is useful if you need to import modules called “api” from multiple packages.

Also, to answer your question “Why can’t I specify the same import for multiple files at one place and I must spec the same import in both files?”, if you’re importing the same packages in multiple files, that could indicate those files are closely related, and should be merged into a single file. Unlike C++ or Java, where every class is its own file, the pythonic way is to make each module (file) as self-contained as possible, which usually means they contain multiple classes and functions.