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Creating and Importing a Module

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Migrated to http://pythonadventures.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/create-import-module/.

If you have some functions that you use often, you can collect them in a module.

mymodule.py:

def f1(n):
    return n + 1

use-mymodule.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import mymodule

print mymodule.f1(5)      # => 6
print mymodule.__name__   # => mymodule (note that .py is missing)

It is also possible to add some testing code to a module:

mymodule.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

def f1(n):
    return n + 1

if __name__ == "__main__":
    number = 1977
    print f1(number)   # => 1978

Now, you can still import it like in use-mymodule.py, or you can launch it as if it were a standalone script. In the latter case the test suite will be executed. If you import it, the test suite is not executed. A test suite is a good practice to be sure that the module is working as expected.