Importing module from network

Question

Is there a way to get python to read modules from a network?

We have many machines and it would be a too much effort to update each machine manually each time I change a module so I want python to get the modules from a location on the network.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Mount your network location into your file-system and add that path to your PYTHONPATH. That way, Python on your local machine will be able to see the modules which are present in the remote location. You cannot directly import from modules remotely, like specifying a js file in html.

Answer 2

I believe you're looking for a distributed computing framework, where you deploy code and data to one node and they are distributed as task among a cluster of clients/servers/peers. Check Pyro, execnet, Parallel Python, Jug and RPyC.

Answer 3

While it's a little pathological to want to import modules over the network, it is actually possible. Take a look at the source for zipimport to get an idea of how it can be done.

Answer 4

How I ended up doing this:

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System >> Advanced >> Environment Variables >> System Variables >> New >> Name = PYTHONPATH, value = \server\scriptFolder

Thanks everyone for all the help :)

Answer 5

sys.path.append(r'\\network\path')
import module

Answer 6

It might be notable that a module for importing packages/modules available through HTTP/S exists and it is httpimport. This is for both Python2 and Python3.

So, as of the accepted answer, it turns out that there are ways to programmatically import remote modules "like javascript" as follows:

>>> with httpimport.remote_repo(['package1'], 'http://my-codes.example.com/python_packages'):
...     import package1
...
>>> # -- 'package1' code is available here --