autoimp

Automatic Python imports.

Introduction

At the interactive Python prompt, I found myself wasting a significant amount of time by repeatedly writing statements such as import urllib2, os, socket. Every time that I opened a new Python session, I needed to re-import all of the libraries that I intended to work with. The autoimp module imports all available Python modules automatically:

>>> from autoimp import *
>>> os.stat('.')
>>> Image.open('test.bmp')
>>> pylab.plot([1,2],[3,4])
>>> scipy.linalg.eig([[1,2],[3,4]])
>>> ...

The modules imported from autoimp are proxy objects which lazily load when they are first used. To properly use autoimp, you should place the following code in your PYTHONSTARTUP file:

from autoimp import *

Now, all modules are automatically imported and made available in your interactive Python sessions. If your editor does not support PYTHONPATH, see note [1].

Features

Public domain, compatible with Python 2.1 - 2.5.
Can be used in Python source code files.
Tested with the Python standard library and extensions: CGKit, Numpy, Scipy, OpenGL, PIL, Pygame, and ODE.
Works with documentation utilities such as pydoc and epydoc if __all__ is defined.
Does not currently work with py2exe and pyinstaller, because the installers cannot determine which modules were imported.

Current Version

Version 1.0.2 source code is available.

Version History

Version history (changelog):

1.0.2: source code
1.0.1: source code
1.0.0: source code

Author

The autoimp source code and supporting documentation have been placed in the public domain.

Please send patches and bug reports to my e-mail address:

>>> 'Y29ubmVsbHliYXJuZXNAZ21haWwuY29t'.decode('base64')

- Connelly Barnes

Footnotes

Alternatively, for editors such as IDLE which do not load the PYTHONSTARTUP file after running a script, you can (a) patch your editor or (b) use a hack to circumvent the problem: add the following code to Lib/site-packages/sitecustomize.py:

import autoimp; autoimp._export_builtins()

This hack will cause all available modules to be placed in the builtin namespace of every Python script which is run; this can presumably cause hard-to-find bugs. You have been warned.