/python-namespace-example

Simple Python namespace example

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

Python Namespace Packages: A simple example

This repo contains a very simple example demonstrating the usage of python namespace packages.

What is a python namespace package? In short, it just like a python module but without an __init__.py file. This tells python that you intend to create a namespace package and allow you to share the "module name" with different python packages!

You can read more about namespace packages here.

Example: Description

For this example, we have 2 python packages:

  • package-1: Contains a hello_world.py python module.
  • package-2: Contains a hola_mundo.py python module.

These two packages share a common namespace: my_package

This means that to access the respective hello_world and hola_mundo you have to go through the same namespace:

from my_package import hello_world
from my_package import hola_mundo

You can test it out, but first install the modules:

  • pip install -e package-1
  • pip install -e package-2

Now run the test-namespace.py script!

python test-namespace.py

You should see a Hello, world! and ¡Hola, mundo! in your terminal!

How does this works?

Notice the package-1 and package-2 directory structure:

package-1
├── setup.py
└── src
    └──  my_package
        └── hello_world.py

package-2
├── setup.py
└── src
    └──  my_package
        └── hola_mundo.py

Both are independent modules, but share the my_package directory. By using the setuptools.find_namespace_packages function in the setup.py, Python is able to identify the my_package directory as a namespace package.

Of course, you can have package-1 without package-2 and vice-verse. But once installed, the submodules from both packages will share a common namespace.