Python Modules

A python module can be defined as a python program file which contains a python code
including python functions, class, or variables. In other words, we can say that our python
code file saved with the extension (.py) is treated as the module. We may have a runnable
code inside the python module.

Modules in Python provides us the flexibility to organize the code in a logical way.

To use the functionality of one module into another, we must have to import the specific
module.

Example
In this example, we will create a module named as file.py which contains a function func that
contains a code to print some message on the console.

Let's create the module named as file.py.

1. #displayMsg prints a message to the name being passed.

2. def displayMsg(name)
3. print("Hi "+name);

Here, we need to include this module into our main module to call the method displayMsg()
defined in the module named file.

Loading the module in our python code

We need to load the module in our python code to use its functionality. Python provides two
types of statements as defined below.

1. The import statement

2. The from-import statement

The import statement

The import statement is used to import all the functionality of one module into another. Here,
we must notice that we can use the functionality of any python source file by importing that
file as the module into another python source file.

We can import multiple modules with a single import statement, but a module is loaded once
regardless of the number of times, it has been imported into our file.

The syntax to use the import statement is given below.

 1. import module1,module2,........ module n

Hence, if we need to call the function displayMsg() defined in the file file.py, we have to
import that file as a module into our module as shown in the example below.

Example:

1. import file;
2. name = input("Enter the name?")
3. file.displayMsg(name)

Output:

Enter the name?John

Hi John

The from-import statement

Instead of importing the whole module into the namespace, python provides the flexibility to
import only the specific attributes of a module. This can be done by using from? import
statement. The syntax to use the from-import statement is given below.

1. from < module-name> import <name 1>, <name 2>..,<name n>

Consider the following module named as calculation which contains three functions as
summation, multiplication, and divide.

calculation.py:

#place the code in the calculation.py

def summation(a,b):
return a+b
def multiplication(a,b):
return a*b;
def divide(a,b):
return a/b;

Main.py:

from calculation import summation

#it will import only the summation() from calculation.py
a = int(input("Enter the first number"))
b = int(input("Enter the second number"))
 print("Sum = ",summation(a,b)) #we do not need to specify the module name while acce
ssing summation()

Output:

Enter the first number10

Enter the second number20
Sum = 30

The from...import statement is always better to use if we know the attributes to be imported
from the module in advance. It doesn't let our code to be heavier. We can also import all the
attributes from a module by using *.

Consider the following syntax.

1. from <module> import *

Renaming a module
Python provides us the flexibility to import some module with a specific name so that we can
use this name to use that module in our python source file.

The syntax to rename a module is given below.

1. import <module-name> as <specific-name>

Example

1. #the module calculation of previous example is imported in this example as cal.

2. import calculation as cal;
3. a = int(input("Enter a?"));
4. b = int(input("Enter b?"));
5. print("Sum = ",cal.summation(a,b))

Output:

Enter a?10
Enter b?20
Sum = 30

Using dir() function

The dir() function returns a sorted list of names defined in the passed module. This list
contains all the sub-modules, variables and functions defined in this module.

Consider the following example.

Example

1. import json
2.
3. List = dir(json)
4.
5. print(List)

Output:

['JSONDecoder', 'JSONEncoder', '__all__', '__author__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__',

'__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__', '__version__',
'_default_decoder', '_default_encoder', 'decoder', 'dump', 'dumps', 'encoder', 'load', 'loads', 'scanner']

The reload() function

As we have already stated that, a module is loaded once regardless of the number of times it
is imported into the python source file. However, if you want to reload the already imported
module to re-execute the top-level code, python provides us the reload() function. The syntax
to use the reload() function is given below.

1. reload(<module-name>)

for example, to reload the module calculation defined in the previous example, we must use
the following line of code.

1. reload(calculation)

Scope of variables
In Python, variables are associated with two types of scopes. All the variables defined in a
module contain the global scope unless or until it is defined within a function.

All the variables defined inside a function contain a local scope that is limited to this function
itself. We can not access a local variable globally.

If two variables are defined with the same name with the two different scopes, i.e., local and
global, then the priority will always be given to the local variable.

Consider the following example.

Example

1. name = "john"
2. def print_name(name):
 3. print("Hi",name) #prints the name that is local to this function only.
4. name = input("Enter the name?")
5. print_name(name)

Output:

Hi David

Python packages
The packages in python facilitate the developer with the application development
environment by providing a hierarchical directory structure where a package contains sub-
packages, modules, and sub-modules. The packages are used to categorize the application
level code efficiently.

Let's create a package named Employees in your home directory. Consider the following
steps.

1. Create a directory with name Employees on path /home.

2. Create a python source file with name ITEmployees.py on the path /home/Employees.

ITEmployees.py

1. def getITNames():
2. List = ["John", "David", "Nick", "Martin"]
3. return List;

3. Similarly, create one more python file with name BPOEmployees.py and create a function
getBPONames().

4. Now, the directory Employees which we have created in the first step contains two python
modules. To make this directory a package, we need to include one more file here, that is
__init__.py which contains the import statements of the modules defined in this directory.

__init__.py

1. from ITEmployees import getITNames

2. from BPOEmployees import getBPONames

5. Now, the directory Employees has become the package containing two python modules.
Here we must notice that we must have to create __init__.py inside a directory to convert this
directory to a package.
6. To use the modules defined inside the package Employees, we must have to import this in
our python source file. Let's create a simple python source file at our home directory (/home)
which uses the modules defined in this package.

Test.py

1. import Employees
2. print(Employees.getNames())

Output:

['John', 'David', 'Nick', 'Martin']

We can have sub-packages inside the packages. We can nest the packages up to any level
depending upon the application requirements.

The following image shows the directory structure of an application Library management
system which contains three sub-packages as Admin, Librarian, and Student. The sub-
packages contain the python modules.

Python Date and time

Python provides the datetime module work with real dates and times. In real-world
applications, we need to work with the date and time. Python enables us to schedule our
Python script to run at a particular timing.

In Python, the date is not a data type, but we can work with the date objects by importing the
module named with datetime, time, and calendar.

In this section of the tutorial, we will discuss how to work with the date and time objects in
Python.

The datetime classes are classified in the six main classes.

 o date - It is a naive ideal date. It consists of the year, month, and day as attributes.
o time - It is a perfect time, assuming every day has precisely 24*60*60 seconds. It has
hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo as attributes.
o datetime - It is a grouping of date and time, along with the attributes year, month,
day, hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo.
o timedelta - It represents the difference between two dates, time or datetime instances
to microsecond resolution.
o tzinfo - It provides time zone information objects.
o timezone - It is included in the new version of Python. It is the class that implements
the tzinfo abstract base class.

Tick
In Python, the time instants are counted since 12 AM, 1st January 1970. The
function time() of the module time returns the total number of ticks spent since 12 AM, 1st
January 1970. A tick can be seen as the smallest unit to measure the time.

Consider the following example

import time;
#prints the number of ticks spent since 12 AM, 1st January 1970
print(time.time())

Output:

1585928913.6519969

How to get the current time?

The localtime() functions of the time module are used to get the current time tuple. Consider
the following example.

Example

import time;

#returns a time tuple

print(time.localtime(time.time()))

Output:
time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=21, tm_min=21, tm_sec=40, tm_wday=4,
tm_yday=94, tm_isdst=0)

Time tuple
The time is treated as the tuple of 9 numbers. Let's look at the members of the time tuple.

Index Attribute Values

0 Year 4 digit (for example 2018)

1 Month 1 to 12

2 Day 1 to 31

3 Hour 0 to 23

4 Minute 0 to 59

5 Second 0 to 60

6 Day of weak 0 to 6

7 Day of year 1 to 366

8 Daylight savings -1, 0, 1 , or -1

Getting formatted time

The time can be formatted by using the asctime() function of the time module. It returns the
formatted time for the time tuple being passed.

Example

import time
#returns the formatted time

print(time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time())))

Output:

Tue Dec 18 15:31:39 2018

Python sleep time

The sleep() method of time module is used to stop the execution of the script for a given
amount of time. The output will be delayed for the number of seconds provided as the float.

Consider the following example.

Example

import time
for i in range(0,5):
print(i)
#Each element will be printed after 1 second
time.sleep(1)

Output:

0
1
2
3
4

The datetime Module

The datetime module enables us to create the custom date objects, perform various
operations on dates like the comparison, etc.

To work with dates as date objects, we have to import the datetime module into the python
source code.

Consider the following example to get the datetime object representation for the current
time.

Example

import datetime
#returns the current datetime object
print(datetime.datetime.now())

Output:

2020-04-04 13:18:35.252578

Creating date objects

We can create the date objects bypassing the desired date in the datetime constructor for
which the date objects are to be created.
Consider the following example.

Example

1. import datetime
2. #returns the datetime object for the specified date
3. print(datetime.datetime(2020,04,04))

Output:

2020-04-04 00:00:00

We can also specify the time along with the date to create the datetime object. Consider the
following example.

Example

1. import datetime
2.
3. #returns the datetime object for the specified time
4.
5. print(datetime.datetime(2020,4,4,1,26,40))

Output:

2020-04-04 01:26:40

In the above code, we have passed in datetime() function year, month, day, hour, minute, and
millisecond attributes in a sequential manner.

Comparison of two dates

We can compare two dates by using the comparison operators like >, >=, <, and <=.

Consider the following example.

Example

1. from datetime import datetime as dt

2. #Compares the time. If the time is in between 8AM and 4PM, then it prints working h
ours otherwise it prints fun hours
3. if dt(dt.now().year,dt.now().month,dt.now().day,8)<dt.now()<dt(dt.now().year,dt.now
().month,dt.now().day,16):
4. print("Working hours....")
 5. else:
6. print("fun hours")

Output:

fun hours

The calendar module

Python provides a calendar object that contains various methods to work with the calendars.

Consider the following example to print the calendar for the last month of 2018.

Example

import calendar;
cal = calendar.month(2023,11)
#printing the calendar of December 2018
print(cal)

Output:

March 2020
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31

Printing the calendar of whole year

The prcal() method of calendar module is used to print the calendar of the entire year. The
year of which the calendar is to be printed must be passed into this method.

Example

import calendar
#printing the calendar of the year 2019
s = calendar.prcal(2023)

Output: