Create object from variable indirect reference?

[jhermann]

On 10 Nov., 17:03, NickC <reply... at works.fine.invalid> wrote:
> Many thanks for the replies.  getattr() works great:

You can get a little more versatile and even specify the location of
the name (i.e. the module / package name) without pre-importing it,
like this...

def importName(modulename, name=None):
    """ Import identifier C{name} from module C{modulename}.

        If name is omitted, modulename must contain the name after the
        module path, delimited by a colon.

        @param modulename: Fully qualified module name, e.g. C{x.y.z}.
        @param name: Name to import from C{modulename}.
        @return: Requested object.
        @rtype: object
    """
    if name is None:
        modulename, name = modulename.split(':', 1)
    module = __import__(modulename, globals(), {}, [name])
    return getattr(module, name)

print importName("socket:gethostname")()


This is especially useful if you want to specify factory classes or
the like in a non-python config file. The syntax is the same as that
of setuptools entry points.