Intermediate Python Tutorial: How to Use the __init__.py File

A succinct tutorial on how to use the __init__.py file to import directories as python libraries.
Welcome to my series for Learning Python, where I will be teaching fundamental concepts in the Python programming language.
These videos will focus on one aspect of Python at a time, but your understanding of the material will be greatly improved through usage. I recommend applying the concepts described here in your own project, or viewing the Developer Diary series where I use these tools on bigger projects.
• Developer Diary: Open ...

[@eom-dev]

Hello everyone! Another user was having a problem that I want to share with you guys. When you import a package to python, the interpreter searches several paths to find your library - one of which being the working directory. If, however, one of those other paths has a library with the same name, that one will take precedence! If you create a library called Matplotlib, python will still import the original instead of yours!

[@ajayjoseph4498]

I came here to learn __init__, but the way you have demonstrated is absolutely amazing; now I understand what from, import, and __init__.py do. Brilliant!.

[@eom-dev]

Thank you! I appreciate it!

[@PatrickSteil]

Same! Good job

[@MarkSmith-vo1vn]

Slight correction. I haven’t finished watching it yet. But if you do import resources.object_ones. You can do object_ones.Ones(). That’s it. It’s more to type, which is why the from is used. But you will often see packages like pandas like this. import pandas as pd. Then we do pd.DataFrame() blah blah.

[@jackcaesar2596]

Finally a short and to the point tutorial that actually tells me what the frick a __init__.py is and how to use it, thank you!

[@devdrane]

OH MY GOD it's so simple yet noone has ever explained it like this!!!

[@mihailb0r0koko89]

Jeeez I always used init files without typing in anything. 2 years passed here I am finding out this blessing of information. This will clean up a lot of mess in my projects. Huge thanks!!!!!

[@swarnimjambhule3264]

Thanks, no confusing words used. Clearly explained!

[@c0nsumption]

This was the 'dark souls boss' of python for me. You executed him in under 6 minutes. Thank you sensei.

[@utpalmohane1416]

concise, short, to the point, just what I was expecting

[@cysong88161]

randomly came across and whatever this is, this helped me understand soo much init and the concept of library, in such a short and engaging video. thank you so much.

[@JV-jc7ci]

You're a gem! Such a great teacher! If everyone taught like this anyone could learn Python in days!

[@davidnobles162]

Thank you! The first two minutes explained my confusion about why some of my code would work without errors when other code wouldn't. Definitely helped me. Thanks!!!

[@parralelife]

Concise, clear and very informative. Thank you ❤

[@samarjitdebnath5996]

Short and straightforward, great work Eric!

[@ahmedalhamadah5999]

Great! I was reading tutorials about python to grasp everything. Not a great idea. It was confusing especially the __init__ but your videos makes it so easy to understand! Love it. Thank you so much

[@JustPlainRob]

Thank you for this. You're a good teacher and your explanations are clear. I was struggling because all the answers were "just append the directory to the system path" or "put it in the init file" with no information on WHAT to put in the file.

[@adityanjsg99]

It takes an altogether different mind to even bother about this aspect!! Thanks.

[@splendorman7922]

this might be the best explanation about imports on youtube. thanks man

[@derekknowlton2384]

Thanks for that clear description. This make reusing code so much easier. I have been trying to figure this out for two weeks.

[@adrianmisak07]

i dont see how this video could have been better. thank you

[@nathanielhorn144]

Extremely helpful and very well explained.

[@poncelas91]

Very good explanation. I was wondering why a lot of projects had hundreds of lines of code added to their __init__ file and this has helped a lot. Thanks mate!

[@mrc1500]

Thanks, Eric. This short video was just what I was looking for. I'm a Python newcomer and packages have been difficult to grok until now.

[@Jerry-uc1pn]

Short and straight to the point. I love this!

[@andrewiglinski148]

Oh my lord my eyes!!! You are one of like three people I’ve ever met that works in a light theme….

[@alkhashtee]

Thank you very much Eric, I sure appreciate you for this short informative video. Will support you till the end .

[@eom-dev]

Much appreciated!

[@user-zv9pu7kf6z]

Super helpful! I love how you walked through the logic

[@CyberPsyLen]

Superb succinct tutorial - many thanks!

[@kirito3082]

Excellent explanation, thank you

[@StefanoVerugi]

The title of this video should be: "how to make a tutorial that lets you quickly learn something useful" 🙂

[@MuhammadAbdullahTariq-iz4ij]

Explained very well 👏

[@elias043011]

One of the better explanations i have seen on youtube!

[@eom-dev]

Thank you!

[@armandoWebDev]

Thank you so much for this video. I find this topic relatively challenging to understand but now is completely clear for me. Thanks again.

[@sumangupta871]

Very short and nice and clear explanation.

[@himanshuyadav1712]

Thanks , this video help me to get more clear and easily understanadable information

[@jonnynilsen9276]

Really good explanation Eric! you are really the first KZbinr that explained it so good that i can understand it right away without becoming confused xD. You got my sub :)

[@eom-dev]

Thank you! Feel free to join our discord server if you have any questions! I'm happy to help :)

[@rubyashby8303]

Awesome tutorial ........

[@oursblanc6477]

Thanks You very much from France !

[@cusematt23]

You are very good at explaining things. Great video!

[@Vishnuishere]

Thanks a lot mate, was trying for ages this.. but resolved now. Thank you .

[@nyanlinnhtet7773]

Thanks a lot Mr.Eric 😍😍

[@girishdoddi4831]

Wow how come this guy have very less subscribers. you deserve more.

[@christofferd647]

Waow, great explanation thank you so much. I was able to follow along :)

[@airatvaliullin8420]

I think you can also write something like __add__ = ["object_one", "object_two"] inside of this __init__.py file.

[@RealisticSohaib]

subscriber number 382 here. great content. to the point. thanks

[@eom-dev]

Thanks for the sub, welcome aboard!

[@junealexissantos4341]

Broo, you are a genius. Thank you for explaining it so clearly. Subbed and liked!

[@senthilnayagan7047]

It helps understand the concept better!

[@durgeshkshirsagar116]

Another use of __init__.py file is to provide an interface so if you change structure of package you only need to change the init file and not other imports in your client code.

[@kya-baat]

Short and to the point. Great work Eric 👌 I think I would be coming back to you the next time as well for any help on python.

[@TomWelch-l5q]

Thank you so much for this video! However, I was wondering if we could simply use "from resources import *" to avoid specifying which object we're trying to import? Thanks for your help!

[@eddyeffy]

Thanks for the explanation, it's now clearer

[@dhirajkumarsahu999]

Thanks a ton Eric!!

[@chianlee1381]

Very nice and clear tutorial, it helps a lot!

[@Ma1ne2]

Straight to the point, thanks!

[@inteligenciaartificiuau]

Amazing! Thanks!

[@giacomodavide3316]

Very useful and very clear. Thank you!

[@rogerayalarojas4617]

Interesante. Gracias

[@hasanshovon3402]

nice video

[@gpet2184]

Excellent! man, I will recommend your channel.

[@amit12000]

Nice video

[@avnichakraverty7783]

great explanation!

[@bulldawg4498]

Clear and concise ... Good job!

[@user-fe9hy4uq4i]

Awesome!

[@t-distributedkid3825]

Just what I was looking for!

[@PhilsArtVibes]

ok but what if tutorial.py has to import from a ../ dir?

[@uuuummm9]

When i just joined a python project (it was Django based) i noticed those __init__ files almost in every directory. They also referred to each other in a quite chaotic way. Few years later i started working on my own projects (this time fastapi) and the things do not seem to be clear still. I noticed very weird things - e.g. my main file may work fine, but when i run my tests (which use the main file) i get errors "package 'xyz' is not found". It looks like there is a lot of magic in terms of visibility of packages. Sometimes they can see parent packages, sometimes cannot. Thee is also that feature of relative import which also behaves not as expected sometimes. So yeah i have difficult times understanding the idea nd how to structure my projects.

[@schlaus_kwab]

I really like how you smash the poor keyboard

[@arunkumaranbalagan6048]

Thanks Mr.Eric. it's a good explanation... 🎉

[@ahobbo6401]

Well done. Explained excellently.

[@eom-dev]

Glad it was helpful!

[@boringsoftware2093]

thanks man that was excellent, also: for python2 empty __init__.py files work wonders X-D

[@rubenschulte1299]

Nice Video Bro

[@pascal831]

Thanks Brozeff!

[@drover7476]

oh my days thank you

[@sivanesans2424]

Simple but great work.. Thanks

[@Airoupmusic]

thank you fore share it

[@nadeemNadamat]

Very beautifully explained brother

[@darioBenedict]

Congrats!! Very very well explained.

[@eom-dev]

Thank you!

[@kalekber]

That was straight up to the point. Can you make more vids on tricky parts of python? Some concepts might be challenging to wrap your head around, especially from someone coming from other languages.

[@eom-dev]

Thank you, I try to make videos like these as the topic comes up in my daily workflow. If you point something out to me, though, I'd be happy to make a video on it.

[@kalekber]

​@@eom-dev I have some topics in mind. How to structure a python code since, I have noticed that untyped languages are not ideal for big projects. And another topic that would have been sweet is software development architecture styles. Those two topics always come up together.

[@kmehour]

Thank you very much

[@the12nina]

Thanks for the help! Really good explanation

[@eom-dev]

Glad you liked it, thank you!

[@tki967]

can you please put library and code to different folders and access library. May be at the same level.

[@HAMHAMAT]

I think you could call these two functions without assigning them to variables. You could write: resources.One() resources.Two() Instead of: o = resources.One() t = resources.Two() You will get the same result.

[@olekristianmller-hansen4220]

Hi! Can I loop through files and import them at run time? I don't know which files to import beforehand.

[@rootifera]

Just curious, what does a blank __init__.py file do in this case? Until this video, everywhere I looked was saying "oh just create an empty __init__.py file and it should work", guess what, it never worked. Thanks for the video, that was very helpful.

[@user-of2ni3ju7j]

thank youfor this.

[@kosi5]

Thank you!

[@nikhil182]

This is really helpful. Thank you so much!

[@labhansh1082]

Hey, I am really struggling with relative imports. It would be great if you make a vid about it

[@nurshah816]

What I missing here, resources.one() throwing me an error bcz i am bypassing object_one file. when I do import resources.object_one as one and then o = one.One() works fine

[@calm_compost]

If the __init__.py is empty in this case, the script fails. Why so ? Has class something to do with it ?

[@fhuadbalogun2997]

Thanks for this. I really needed to understand this.

[@eom-dev]

Glad it was helpful!

[@jsj757]

Great🎉 .Crystal clear ❤

[@chrisnorthall8317]

for this to work, do I need to hit the keyboard as hard as you?

[@WondrousHello]

Why do you have to write “from resources.object_one import One” in the init file when it’s already inside of the resources folder. I would’ve thought the line should be just “from object_one import One” 🤔. Is this something to do with where the cwd is?

[@udemycourses-bq7uj]

Thanks a lot

[@toxxmoloi1873]

Now everything just makes sense 😁

[@patrickkrenz515]

Fantastic explanation!

[@indometalpython4969]

Thanks! Understood it well and clear. The naming __init__.py is by convention, right?

[@hemantsah1770]

I understood this concept now, One favor I want, How do we manage the different configurations(DevelopentConfig, QAConfig, ProductionConfig), They hold the variables that are used in all over the project, is there any way that we can mention if we want to use DevelopmentConfig or ProductionConfig without changing lots of code?

[@maksymilianbiruk6877]

Brilliant explanation! Thank you:)

[@jdiegosf]

So what is the purpose of having an empty __init__.py file? I've seen this in many projects...