How imports work

Import Types

Absolute

import my_package.module

Imports the module and its accessible via its full name as a variable (i.e., my_package.module). When importing a module within a package all its parents are imported as well. In our example my_package is imported before my_package.module as a side-effect from importing my_package.module.

Relative

from .module import variable or from ..module import variable

Imports one or several variables from a module/package. The import path must be relative to the current module. This import mechanism is advantageous when attempting to vendor.

The __import__ function

__import__ within builtins is the implementation of what imports perform. Writing any import statement whether absolute, relative or includes a from ... import statement invokes the function.

Importlib

Another option for importing is using importlib with importlib.import_module.

importlib.import_module("my_package.module")

The functions imports the module similar to absolute imports but returns the final module, unlike absolute imports.

For example:

import my_package.module

importlib_module = importlib.import_module("my_package.module")
# The importlib module is already `my_package.module` and doesn't need to be accessed with a `.module`
assert importlib_module is my_package.module