Is there a standard way to list names of Python modules in a package?

Question

Is there a straightforward way to list the names of all modules in a package, without using __all__?

For example, given this package:

/testpkg
/testpkg/__init__.py
/testpkg/modulea.py
/testpkg/moduleb.py

I'm wondering if there is a standard or built-in way to do something like this:

>>> package_contents("testpkg")
['modulea', 'moduleb']

The manual approach would be to iterate through the module search paths in order to find the package's directory. One could then list all the files in that directory, filter out the uniquely-named py/pyc/pyo files, strip the extensions, and return that list. But this seems like a fair amount of work for something the module import mechanism is already doing internally. Is that functionality exposed anywhere?

Answer 1

print dir(module)

Answer 2

import module
help(module)

Answer 3

Maybe this will do what you're looking for?

import imp
import os
MODULE_EXTENSIONS = ('.py', '.pyc', '.pyo')

def package_contents(package_name):
    file, pathname, description = imp.find_module(package_name)
    if file:
        raise ImportError('Not a package: %r', package_name)
    # Use a set because some may be both source and compiled.
    return set([os.path.splitext(module)[0]
        for module in os.listdir(pathname)
        if module.endswith(MODULE_EXTENSIONS)])

Answer 4

def package_contents(package_name):
  package = __import__(package_name)
  return [module_name for module_name in dir(package) if not module_name.startswith("__")]

Answer 5

Using python2.5 (and up, I suppose), you could also use the pkgutil module:

>>> import pkgutil
>>> [name for _, name, _ in pkgutil.iter_modules(['testpkg'])]
['modulea', 'moduleb']

EDIT: Note that the parameter is not a list of modules, but a list of paths, so you might want to do something like this:

>>> import os.path, pkgutil
>>> import testpkg
>>> pkgpath = os.path.dirname(testpkg.__file__)
>>> [name for _, name, _ in pkgutil.iter_modules([pkgpath])