Importing User Defined Modules In Python From A Directory

I'm trying to import a module I wrote in python that just prints out a list containing numbers. The issue I'm having is that I want to be able to import it from a separate director

Solution 1:

When the file is printnumbers.py, the module is called printnumbers (without the .py). Therefore use

import printnumbers

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import sys
sys.path.append('/home/jake/Documents')

appends '/home/jake/Documents' to the end of sys.path. The directories listed in sys.path are searched (in the order listed) whenever an import statement causes Python to search for a module. (Already imported modules are cached in sys.modules, so Python does not always need to search sys.path directories to import a module...)

So if you have a file /home/jake/Documents/printnumbers.py, then import printnumbers will cause Python to import it provided there is no other file named printnumbers.py in a directory listed in sys.path ahead of /home/jake/Documents/.

Note that injecting directories into sys.path is not the usual way to set up Python to search for modules. Usually it is preferable to add /home/jake/Documents to your PYTHONPATH environment variable. sys.path will automatically include the directories listed in the PYTHONPATH environment variable.

Solution 2:

and one more thing, use an empty __ init __.py file in you directory to make it as a python package (only then Python will know that this directory is a Python package directory other than an ordinary directory). Thus you can import modules from that package from different directory.