import from a string

[Matt McCredie]

iu2 <israelu <at> elbit.co.il> writes:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Having a file called funcs.py, I would like to read it into a string,
> and then import from that string.
> That is instead of importing from the fie system, I wonder if it's
> possible to eval the text in the string and treat it as a module.
> 
> For example
> 
> with file('funcs.py') as f: txt = r.read()
> string_import(txt, 'funcs')  # is string_import possible?
> 
> to have now a module called funcs with the functions defined in
> funcs.py.

You can do something like this:

import types
import sys

mymodule = types.ModuleType("mymodule", "Optional Doc-String")

with file('funcs.py') as f: 
    txt = f.read()
exec txt in globals(), mymodule.__dict__
sys.modules['mymodule'] = mymodule


Note that you shouldn't exec untrusted code.
You might also look at the __import__ funciton, which can import by python path.
You might also look at the imp module.

Matt