Force Python import to be absolute (ignore local package directory)

Question

Is there a way to force an import to be absolute instead of relative?

I am "overriding" the Python standard library json module, so in my projects I always use the correct encoder and parameters:

project/foo/json.py : (mark this filename)

import json as pyjson

class ComplexEncoder(pyjson.JSONEncoder):
    def default(self, obj):
        if hasattr(obj, 'isoformat'):
            return obj.isoformat()
        else:
            if type(obj) == file:
                return "filestream"
            raise TypeError, 'Object of type %s with value of %s is not JSON serializable' % (type(obj), repr(obj))

def dumps(data):
    return pyjson.dumps(data, cls=ComplexEncoder, check_circular=False, separators=(',', ':'), ensure_ascii=False)

def loads(data):
    return pyjson.loads(data)

When I import this file I get the dreaded AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'JSONEncoder' . A print(pyjson.__file__) confirms my suspicion that import json as pyjson imports json from the local package instead of from the Python standard library.

Is there a way to force the import to be absolute, so the local directory is ignored?

Answer 1

If your "json" module is inside a package, then this will fix it:

from __future__ import absolute_import

With that __future__ statement, imports will be absolute be default - ie it will only look for a top-level module or file called json .

If you need to import your local one, you can either do import foo.json , or you can explictly ask for a relative import using from . import json from . import json or from .json import dumps .

(I am assuming you're using Python 2).

Answer 2

You can delete the self path from the sys.path:

self_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
if self_dir in sys.path:
    sys.path.remove(self_dir)

Then import the json as regular.

If you need to import anything from the local directory, just append the path to the sys.path and import what you need:

sys.path.append(self_dir)
from local_module import *