Restrict import to specific path, without restricting the imported module's path

Question

Is it possible to import a module from a specific directory, without affecting the import path of the imported module?

If I was to temporarily replace sys.path with the desired directory, the imported module would not be able to import anything outside of that directory.

I don't want to just prepend sys.path with the directory, because I don't want importing to fall back to another source.

Answer 1

The standard library's imp module allows you to search a list of paths to find and import a module without altering sys.path. For example:

import imp

search_paths = [path_to_spam]
modfile, modpath, description = imp.find_module('spam', search_paths)
with modfile:
    spam = imp.load_module('spam', modfile, modpath, description)