Importing custom python module

Question

I am creating pip package and before submitting I would like to try it. For simplification, lets assume that python script looks like this:

def foo():
    print("Hello World!")

My setup.py containing metadata looks like:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from setuptools import setup, find_packages

    setup(
        name="test_super_secret",
        version="1.0",
        description="testing pip version 1",
        packages=find_packages(),
    )

I have compiled script using Wheel, so that I'm able to install it via pip :

user@pc:$ python -m pip install dist/test_super_secret-1.0-py2-none-any.whl 
Processing ./dist/test_super_secret-1.0-py2-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: test-super-secret
Successfully installed test-super-secret-1.0

However, when I'm not able to import such module from python:

    >>> import test-super-secret
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    import test-super-secret
               ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

What am I doing wrong? Should I import it in another way or should I change setup so that it would be possible to import module?

EDIT: Module can not be imported even if it is called testsupersecret in the setup.py:

>>> import testsupersecret
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named testsupersecret

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 08 '20 at 18:43

0

test-super-secret is not a valid module name -- you can't have hyphens in the module names (or variables), python thinks this is a minus sign, that's why you get invalid syntax. You should use underscores (which you probably already are using based on your setup.py -- name="test_super_secret", just try importing test_super_secret).

(Python packages can have hyphens in the name, that's probably where the confusion comes from. So test-super-secret is a valid name for pip package, but the module must be named test_super_secret.)

answered Nov 08 '20 at 18:43

Vojtech Trefny

677
5
9

`test-super-secret` is not a valid module name, that is true. However, when I change the name to `testsupersecret` in `setup.py`, I'm still not able to import such a module with error: `ImportError: No module named testsupersecret`. Anyway, from the original question, where did pip even get name `test-super-secret` from? Is it the name from `setup.py` with changed underscores to hyphens? – Ondrej Nov 09 '20 at 08:25

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '20 at 12:17

0

It looks like I did not have correct folder structure to get modules as a library. Once I created directory containing __init__.py and move my script to that directory, I was able to import module like import <MyLibrary>.<my_script_name>

answered Nov 09 '20 at 12:17

Ondrej

817
1
9
16

Importing custom python module

2 Answers2