__import__

[Ryan Paul]

On Sat, 08 May 2004 00:31:58 -0700, Coder Coder wrote:

> Hi,
> Can someone help me with how to overload the __import__ function,
> so that I can call the old __import__ function and if it cannot find
> the library to be able to do something else.
> 
> - Thanks.

The documentation has a small example of import
overload:
	http://docs.python.org/lib/examples-imp.html but a better example

David Mertz (my personal hero!) does an excellent job of explaining it
simply:

""""
 __import__(s [,globals=globals() [,locals=locals() [,fromlist]]])
      Import the module named 's', using namespace dictionaries
      'globals' and 'locals'.  The argument 'fromlist' may be
      omitted, but if specified as a nonempty list of
      strings--e.g., '[""]'--the fully qualified subpackage will
      be imported.  For normal cases, the `import` statement is
      the way you import modules, but in the special circumstance
      that the value of 's' is not determined until runtime, use
      `__import__()`.

      >>> op = __import__('os.path',globals(),locals(),[''])
      >>> op.basename('/this/that/other')
      'other'
""" (I stole this from his web site: http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/appendix_a.txt)

He discusses usage of __import__ in his excellent essay on metaclass
programming:
http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/metaclass_1.txt

You can also find an example in part of his 'Gnosis' library:
http://gnosis.cx/download/gnosis/magic/__init__.py

Have Fun!