pkgutil — Package extension utility
New in version 2.3.
This module provides functions to manipulate packages:
-
pkgutil.extend_path(path, name)
Extend the search path for the modules which comprise a package. Intended use is
to place the following code in a package’s __init__.py:
from pkgutil import extend_path
__path__ = extend_path(__path__, __name__)
This will add to the package’s __path__ all subdirectories of directories on
sys.path named after the package. This is useful if one wants to distribute
different parts of a single logical package as multiple directories.
It also looks for *.pkg files beginning where * matches the name
argument. This feature is similar to *.pth files (see the site
module for more information), except that it doesn’t special-case lines starting
with import. A *.pkg file is trusted at face value: apart from
checking for duplicates, all entries found in a *.pkg file are added to
the path, regardless of whether they exist on the filesystem. (This is a
feature.)
If the input path is not a list (as is the case for frozen packages) it is
returned unchanged. The input path is not modified; an extended copy is
returned. Items are only appended to the copy at the end.
It is assumed that sys.path is a sequence. Items of sys.path that are
not (Unicode or 8-bit) strings referring to existing directories are ignored.
Unicode items on sys.path that cause errors when used as filenames may cause
this function to raise an exception (in line with os.path.isdir()
behavior).
-
pkgutil.get_data(package, resource)
Get a resource from a package.
This is a wrapper for the PEP 302 loader get_data() API. The package
argument should be the name of a package, in standard module format
(foo.bar). The resource argument should be in the form of a relative
filename, using / as the path separator. The parent directory name
.. is not allowed, and nor is a rooted name (starting with a /).
The function returns a binary string that is the contents of the
specified resource.
For packages located in the filesystem, which have already been imported,
this is the rough equivalent of:
d = os.path.dirname(sys.modules[package].__file__)
data = open(os.path.join(d, resource), 'rb').read()
If the package cannot be located or loaded, or it uses a PEP 302 loader
which does not support get_data(), then None is returned.