python - Importing files from different folder

Question

I have the following folder structure.

application
├── app
│?? └── folder
│??     └── file.py
└── app2
    └── some_folder
        └── some_file.py

I want to import some functions from file.py in some_file.py.

I've tried

from application.app.folder.file import func_name

and some other various attempts but so far I couldn't manage to import properly. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Note: This answer was intended for a very specific question. For most programmers coming here from a search engine, this is not the answer you are looking for. Typically you would structure your files into packages (see other answers) instead of modifying the search path.

---

By default, you can't. When importing a file, Python only searches the directory that the entry-point script is running from and sys.path which includes locations such as the package installation directory (it's actually a little more complex than this, but this covers most cases).

However, you can add to the Python path at runtime:

# some_file.py
import sys
# insert at 1, 0 is the script path (or '' in REPL)
sys.path.insert(1, '/path/to/application/app/folder')

import file