Import Basics?

The following is a very simple program that we can use to discuss imports.

import search.scanner as scanner
import sys
class Spam(object):

    def order(self, number):
        print "spam " * number

    def order_eggs():
        print " and eggs!"

    s = Spam()
    s.order(3)
    order_eggs()

>>> dir()

['__doc__', '__name__']

>>> dir()
['__doc__', '__name__']
>>> __name__
'__main__'

>>> import breakfast
spam spam spam
and eggs!
>>> dir()
['__doc__', '__name__', 'breakfast']
>>> import breakfast
>>>

class Spam(object):

    def order(self, number):
        print "spam " * number

    def order_eggs():
        print " and eggs!"

if __name__ == '__main__':
s = Spam()
s.order(3)
order_eggs()

>>> import breakfast

$ jython breakfast.py
spam spam spam
and eggs!

The Import Statement?

In Java, the Import statement is strictly a compiler directive that must occur at the top of the source file. In Jython, the import statement is an expression that can occur anywhere in the source file, and can even be conditionally executed.

As an example, a common idiom is to attempt to import something that may not be there in a try block, and in the except block define the thing in some other way, or import it from a module that is known to be there.

>>> try:
...     from blah import foo
...     print "imported normally"
... except ImportError:
...     print "defining foo in except block"
...     def foo():
...         return "hello from backup foo"
...
defining foo in except block
>>> foo()
'hello from backup foo'
>>>

If a module named ‘blah’ had existed, the definition of foo would have been taken from there and we would have seen ‘imported normally’ printed out. Because no such module existed, foo was defined in the except block, ‘defining foo in except block’ was printed, and when we called foo, the ‘hello from backup foo’ string was returned.

chapter8/
        greetings.py
        greet/
                __init__.py
                hello.py
                people.py

greetings.py?

print "in greetings.py"
import greet.hello

g = greet.hello.Greeter()
g.hello_all()

greet/__init__.py?

print "in greet/__init__.py"

greet/hello.py?

print "in greet/hello.py"
import greet.people as people

class Greeter(object):
    def hello_all(self):
        for name in people.names:
            print "hello %s" % name

greet/people.py?

print "in greet/people.py"

names = ["Josh", "Jim", "Victor", "Leo", "Frank"]

Trying Out the Example Code?

If you run greetings.py in its own directory you get the following output:

$ jython greetings.py
in greetings.py
in greet/__init__.py
in greet/hello.py
in greet/people.py
hello Josh
hello Jim
hello Victor
hello Leo
hello Frank

There is a print statement at the top of each of the .py files to show the order of execution for the modules. When run, the module greetings is loaded, printing out ‘in greetings.py.’ Next it imports greet.hello:

import greet.hello

Because this is the first time that the greet package has been imported, the code in __init__.py is executed, printing ‘in greet/__init__.py’. Then the greet.hello module is executed, printing out ‘in greet/hello.py.’ The greet.hello module then imports the greet.people module, printing out ‘in greet/people.py.’ Now all of the imports are done, and greetings.py can create a greet.hello.Greeter class and call its hello_all method.

From Import Statements?

from module import name

This form of import allows you to import modules, classes or functions nested in other modules. This allows you to import code like this:

from greet import hello

In this case, it is important that ‘hello’ is actually a submodule of greet. This is not a relabeling but actually gets the submodule named ‘hello’ from the greet namespace. You can also use the from style of import to import all of the names in a module (except for those that start with an underscore) into your current module using a *. This form of import is discouraged in the Python community, and is particularly troublesome when importing from Java packages (in some cases it does not work) so you should avoid its use. It looks like this:

from module import *

If you are not importing from a Java package, it is sometimes convenient to use this form to pull in everything from another module.

Relative Import Statements?

A new kind of import introduced in Python 2.5 is the explicit relative import. These import statements use dots to indicate how far back you will walk from the current nesting of modules, with one dot meaning the current module.

from . import module
from .. import module
from .module import submodule
from ..module import submodule

Even though this style of importing has just been introduced, its use is discouraged. Explicit relative imports are a reaction to the demand for implicit relative imports. If we had wanted to import the Greeter class out of greet.hello so that it could be instantiated with just Greeter() instead of greet.hello.Greeter we could have imported it like this:

from greet.hello import Greeter

If you wanted to import Greeter into the greet.people module, you could get away with:

from hello import Greeter

This is a relative import. Because greet.people is a sibling module of greet.hello, the ‘greet’ can be left out. This relative import style is deprecated and should not be used. Some developers like this style so that imports will survive module restructuring, but these relative imports can be error prone because of the possibility of name clashes. There is a new syntax that provides an explicit way to use relative imports, though they too are still discouraged. The previous import statement would look like this:

from .hello import Greeter

Aliasing Import Statements?

Any of the above imports can add an ‘a(chǎn)s’ clause to import a module but give it a new name.

import module as alias
from module import submodule as alias
from . import submodule as alias

This gives you enormous flexibility in your imports, so to go back to the greet.hello example, you could issue:

import greet.hello as foo

And use foo in place of greet.hello.

Hiding Module Names?

Typically when a module is imported, all of the names in the module are available to the importing module. There are a couple of ways to hide these names from importing modules. Starting any name with an underscore (_) will document these names as private. The names are still accessible, they are just not imported when you import the names of a module with ‘from module import *‘. The second way to hide module names is to define a list named __all__, which should contain only those names that you wish to have your module to expose. As an example here is the value of __all__ at the top of Jython’s OS module:

__all__ = ["altsep", "curdir", "pardir", "sep", "pathsep",
               "linesep", "defpath", "name", "path",
               "SEEK_SET", "SEEK_CUR", "SEEK_END"]

Note that you can add to __all__ inside of a module to expand the exposed names of that module. In fact, the os module in Jython does just this to conditionally expose names based on the operating system that Jython is running on.

Java Import Example?

We’ll start with a Java class which is on the CLASSPATH when Jython is started:

package com.foo;
public class HelloWorld {
    public void hello() {
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
    }
    public void hello(String name) {
        System.out.printf("Hello %s!", name);
    }
}

Here we manipulate that class from the Jython interactive interpreter:

>>> from com.foo import HelloWorld
>>> h = HelloWorld()
>>> h.hello()
Hello World!
>>> h.hello("frank")
Hello frank!

It’s important to note that, because the HelloWorld program is located on the Java CLASSPATH, it did not go through the sys.path process we talked about before. In this case the Java class gets loaded directly by the ClassLoader. Discussions of Java ClassLoaders are beyond the scope of this book. To read more about ClassLoader see execution section of the Java language specification:

http://java./docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/execution.doc.html.

Module Search Path and Loading?

Understanding the process of module search and loading is more complicated in Jython than in either CPython or Java, because Jython can search both Java’s CLASSPATH and Python’s path. We’ll start by looking at Python’s path and sys.path. When you issue an import, sys.path defines the path that Jython will use to search for the name you are trying to import. The objects within the sys.path list tell Jython where to search for modules. Most of these objects point to directories, but there are a few special items that can be in sys.path for Jython that are not just pointers to directories. Trying to import a file that does not reside anywhere in the sys.path (and also cannot be found in the CLASSPATH) raises an ImportError exception. Let’s fire up a command line and look at sys.path.

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
['', '/Users/frank/jython/Lib', '__classpath__', '__pyclasspath__/',
'/Users/frank/jython/Lib/site-packages']

The first blank entry (‘’) tells Jython to look in the current directory for modules. The second entry points to Jython’s Lib directory that contains the core Jython modules. The third and fourth entries are special markers that we will discuss later, and the last points to the site-packages directory where new libraries can be installed when you issue setuptools directives from Jython (see Appendix A for more about setuptools). The module that gets imported is the first one that is found along this path. Once a module is found, no more searching is done.

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append("/Users/frank/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.jar")
>>> import com.mysql
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar,
'/Users/frank/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.jar'
>>> dir(com.mysql)
['__name__', 'jdbc']

In this example, we added the mysql jar to the sys path, then when we tried to find com.mysql, the jar was scanned. Note that ‘com.mysql’ is a Java package that is found in mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.jar.

*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, '/Users/frank/jython/jython.jar'
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Classes/classes.jar'
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Classes/ui.jar'
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar,  '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Classes/laf.jar'
...
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext/sunjce_provider.jar'
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/lib/ext/sunpkcs11.jar'

How Jython Finds the Jars and Classes to Scan?

There are two properties that Jython uses to find jars and classes. These settings can be given to Jython using commandline settings or the registry (see Appendix A). The two properties are:

python.packages.paths
python.packages.directories

These properties are comma separated lists of further registry entries that actually contain the values the scanner will use to build its listing. You probably should not change these properties. The properties that get pointed to by these properties are more interesting. The two that potentially make sense to manipulate are:

java.class.path
java.ext.dirs

For the java.class.path property, entries are separated as the classpath is separated on the operating system you are on (that is, ‘;’ on Windows and ‘:’ on most other systems). Each of these paths are checked for a .jar or .zip and if they have these suffixes they will be scanned.

For the java.ext.dirs property, entries are separated in the same manner as java.class.path, but these entries represent directories. These directories are searched for any files that end with .jar or .zip, and if any are found they are scanned.

To control the jars that are scanned, you need to set the values for these properties. There are a number of ways to set these property values, see Appendix A for more.

If you only use full class imports, you can skip the package scanning altogether. Set the system property python.cachedir.skip to true or (again) pass in your own postProperties to turn it off.

Compilation?

Despite the popular belief that Jython is ‘interpreted, not compiled,’ in reality all Jython code is turned into Java bytecode before execution. This Java bytecode is not always saved to disk, but when you see Jython execute any code, even in an eval or an exec, you can be sure that bytecode is getting fed to the JVM. The sole exception to this that we know of is the experimental pycimport module that we will describe in the section on sys.meta_path below, which interprets CPython bytecodes instead of producing Java bytecodes.

sys.path?

When Jython tries to import a module, it will look in its sys.path in the manner described in the previous section until it finds one. If the module it finds represents a Python module or package, this import will display a ‘winner take all’ semantic. That is, the first Python module or package that gets imported blocks any other module or package that might subsequently get found on any lookups. This means that if you have a module foo that contains only a name bar early in the sys.path, and then another module also called foo that only contains a name baz, then executing ‘import foo’ will only give you foo.bar and not foo.baz.

This differs from the case when Jython is importing Java packages. If you have a Java package org.foo containing bar, and a Java package org.foo containing baz later in the path, executing ‘import org.foo’ will merge the two namespaces so that you will get both org.foo.bar and org.foo.baz.

Just as important to keep in mind, if there is a Python module or package of a particular name in your path that conflicts with a Java package in your path this will also have a winner-take-all effect. If the Java package is first in the path, then that name will be bound to the merged Java packages. If the Python module or package wins, no further searching will take place, so the Java packages with the clashing names will never be found.

Naming Python Modules and Packages?

Developers coming from Java will often make the mistake of modeling their Jython package structure the same way that they model Java packages. Do not do this. The reverse url convention of Java is a great, we would even say a brilliant convention for Java. It works very well indeed in the world of Java where these namespaces are merged. In the Python world however, where modules and packages display the winner-take-all semantic, this is a disastrous way to organize your code.

If you adopt this style for Python, say you are coming from ‘a(chǎn)cme.com,’ you would set up a package structure like ‘com.acme.’ If you try to use a library from your vendor xyz that is set up as ‘com.xyz,’ then the first of these on your path will take the ‘com’ namespace, and you will not be able to see the other set of packages.

Proper Python Naming?

The Python convention is to keep namespaces as shallow as you can, and make your top level namespace reasonably unique, whether it is a module or a package. In the case of acme and company xyz, you might start your package structures with ‘a(chǎn)cme’ and ‘xyz’ if you wanted to have these entire codebases under one namespace (not necessarily the right way to go — better to organize by product instead of by organization, as a general rule).

Import Hooks?

To understand the way that Jython imports Java classes you have to understand a bit about the Python import protocol. We won’t get into every detail, for that you would want to look at PEP 302 http://www./dev/peps/pep-0302/.

Briefly, we first try any custom importers registered on sys.meta_path. If one of them is capable of importing the requested module, allow that importer to handle it. Next, we try each of the entries on sys.path. For each of these, we find the first hook registered on sys.path_hooks that can handle the path entry. If we find an import hook and it successfully imports the module, we stop. If this did not work, we try the builtin import logic. If that also fails, an ImportError is thrown. So let’s look at Jython’s path_hooks.

sys.path_hooks?

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path_hooks
[<type 'org.python.core.JavaImporter'>, <type 'zipimport.zipimporter'>,
<type 'ClasspathPyImporter'>]

Each of these path_hooks entries specifies a path_hook that will attempt to import special files. JavaImporter, as its name implies, allows the dynamic loading of Java packages and classes that are specified at runtime. For example, if you want to include a jar at runtime you can execute the following code:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append("mysql-connector-java-5.1.6.jar")
>>> import com.mysql
*sys-package-mgr*: processing new jar, 'mysqlconnector-java-5.1.6.jar'
>>> dir(com.mysql)
['__name__', 'jdbc']

Note how the package scanning gets kicked off when ‘com.mysql’ is imported, as evidenced by the line starting with sys-package-mgr. Upon import, the JavaImporter scanned the new jar and allowed the import to succeed.

sys.meta_path?

Adding entries to sys.meta_path allows you to add import behaviors that will occur before any other import is attempted, even the default builtin importing behavior. This can be a very powerful tool, allowing you to do all sorts of interesting things. As an example, we will talk about an experimental module that ships with Jython 2.5. That module is pycimport. If you start up Jython and issue

>>> import pycimport

Jython will start scanning for .pyc files in your path and, if it finds one, it will use the .pyc file to load your module.pyc files. These are the files that CPython produces when it compiles Python source code. So, after you have imported pycimport (which adds a hook to sys.meta_path) then issue:

>>> import foo

Jython will scan your path for a file named foo.pyc, and if it finds one it will import the foo module using the CPython bytecodes. It does this by creating a special class that defines a find_module method that specifies how to load in a pyc file. This class is then added to the meta search path with the sys.meta_path.insert method. The find_module method calls into other parts of pycimport and looks for .pyc files. If it finds one, it knows how to parse and execute those files and adds the corresponding module to the runtime. Pretty cool, eh?