The from Statement

Importing Select Symbols from a Module

• The from statement is used to load specific defintions within a module into the current namespace
• In other words, from is very similar to import
• However, from only refers to objects defined in a module
• Then, it places these references into the current namespace

>>> from spam import foo
>>> foo()
'foo'
>>> spam.foo()
NameError: spam

• We can access multiple objects using:

>>> from spam import (foo,
...                   bar,
...                   Spam)

• We can load all definitions into the module namespace:

>>> from spam import *

• Modules can control which names can be imported using __all__

>>> # module: spam.py
>>> __all__ = ['bar', 'Spam']  # names exported using
...                            # from spam import *

References

• Python Essential Reference