How do you import your own convenience function modules in Python?

Question

Python can only import files from the current working directory, or from its path, I guess, but this means that if I'm working in a subdirectory on a certain project, I can't import stuff from a parent directory that I wrote to simplify things or provide shortcuts.

This is more for interactive work in IPython and the like, not developing code to be distributed to others. I guess another option is IPython's %run command, which would allow for importing stuff from parent directories, but it also runs anything not in a function, and the functions end up in the root namespace, which might be bad sometimes.

More generally, I guess I'm asking how your Python development folder(s) are organized.

Answer 1

You can use

import sys
sys.path.append(<directory path>)

from module import features

Which is what I do, and it works for me.

This appends directory path to the path which python searches when loading modules (files with convenience functions).

For example, if your convenience functions are in directory C:\dev\python\conv, and you had a file named stuff.py in that directory which contained a helper function called myFunction, you would use the following commands to access and run this function.

import sys
sys.path.append("C:\\dev\\python\\conv")

from stuff import myFunction
myFunction()

If you don't want everything in stuff to be in the global namespace do this:

import sys
sys.path.append("C:\\dev\\python\\conv")
import stuff
stuff.myFunction()