thinking-modules

Part of thinking family.

Module-related python utilities - recursive package scan and import, modeling of names and modules, etc

Main use case for this library is importing everything in given package. Simplest example are decorators that register stuff for CI, a bit like annotation scanning in Java, which need to be triggered/executed before the main portion of your program.

Besides that provides models and related utilities for modules and their names.

Requires python 3.12. Is properly typed.

API

The code is pretty self-documenting (meaning "browse the code, don't expect Sphinx"). It is organized into following modules:

• thinking_modules.model
  • ModuleName
    • represent module or package name
    • doesn't import the module, is just a pointer
    • allows for easy modeling of subpackages, submodules, parent packages, etc
    • can refer to non-existent modules
  • ModuleNamePointer
    • union type representing everything that can be parsed to ModuleName - a str, module itself, etc
  • Module
    • is a descriptor over a python module or package
    • may refer to non-existing piece of code, but will raise exception when using most methods
    • allows you to recognize whether something is a module, package, pkg.__main__ file or shell session
    • exposes some other useful info, like whether a module has been already imported, where is it located in filesystem (if anywhere), what is its root package and allows you to import it with importlib
  • most properties of Module and ModuleName are lazy and cached, so, for example, if you create a Module pointing to a non-existent piece of code, it won't raise exception until you actually access m.module_object; similarly, once you access m.kind, it will be cached and will be quickly accessible next time you access it
  • kudos to lazy for that
• thinking_modules.scan
  • holds a single function: scan(pkg: ModuleNamePointer)
  • that function takes a package name (fails if given a non-package module name)
  • it analyses filesystem, trying to find all the module names within the tree stemming from that package
• thinking_modules.main_modules
  • when we're running anything, its name becomes __main__
  • that module still should be accessible by name based on its filepath
  • for example, if you do python -m pkg.subpkg.mod, you'll execute file .../pkg/subpkg/mod.py which otherwise would be available as pkg.subpkg.mod, but in such runtime will have __name__ __main__
  • this module will analyse (on import) file structure, and expose main_name (of type ModuleName) and main_module (of type Module) that describe pkg.subpkg.mod (as opposed to __main__)
  • it will also (on import) alias pkg.subpkg.mod in sys.modules to __main__, so you can safely do circular imports
• thinking_modules.definitions
  • micro-DSL for queries like:
    • instance(SomeClass()).type_.defining_module
    • type_(SomeClass).defining_module (equivalent to the one above)
    • instance(...).type_.defined_in_module("pkg.mod")
    • instance(...).type_.defined_in_package("pkg") (meaning "in package pkg or any of its subpackages or submodules)
  • nothing complicated, but makes for readable metaprogramming code
• thinking_modules.immutable
  • helper module for something that emulates NamedTuple, while allowing for lazy properties
  • not really related to domain of this project, strictly technical, but pretty useful util
  • is needed, as lazy works around the __dict__, which is lacking in NamedTuples

Reading the test suite is gonna be useful too, in case of uncertainty.