Python – How to import module when module name has a ‘-‘ dash or hyphen in it

hyphenimportmodulepython

I want to import foo-bar.py. This works:

foobar = __import__("foo-bar")

This does not:

from "foo-bar" import *

My question: Is there any way that I can use the above format i.e., from "foo-bar" import * to import a module that has a - in it?

Starting from Python 3.1, you can use importlib :

import importlib  
foobar = importlib.import_module("foo-bar")

Assuming module foo with method bar:

import foo
method_to_call = getattr(foo, 'bar')
result = method_to_call()

You could shorten lines 2 and 3 to:

result = getattr(foo, 'bar')()

if that makes more sense for your use case.

You can use getattr in this fashion on class instance bound methods, module-level methods, class methods... the list goes on.

With Python older than 2.7/3.1, that's pretty much how you do it.

For newer versions, see importlib.import_module for Python 2 and Python 3.

You can use exec if you want to as well.

Or using __import__ you can import a list of modules by doing this:

>>> moduleNames = ['sys', 'os', 're', 'unittest'] 
>>> moduleNames
['sys', 'os', 're', 'unittest']
>>> modules = map(__import__, moduleNames)

Ripped straight from Dive Into Python.