What's a good way to check if a package is installed while within a Python script? I know it's easy from the interpreter, but I need to do it within a script.
I guess I could check if there's a directory on the system that's created during the installation, but I feel like there's a better way. I'm trying to make sure the Skype4Py package is installed, and if not I'll install it.
My ideas for accomplishing the check
This question is related to
python
package
skype
python-import
I'd like to add some thoughts/findings of mine to this topic. I'm writing a script that checks all requirements for a custom made program. There are many checks with python modules too.
There's a little issue with the
try:
import ..
except:
..
solution.
In my case one of the python modules called python-nmap
, but you import it with import nmap
and as you see the names mismatch. Therefore the test with the above solution returns a False result, and it also imports the module on hit, but maybe no need to use a lot of memory for a simple test/check.
I also found that
import pip
installed_packages = pip.get_installed_distributions()
installed_packages
will have only the packages has been installed with pip.
On my system pip freeze
returns over 40
python modules, while installed_packages
has only 1
, the one I installed manually (python-nmap).
Another solution below that I know it may not relevant to the question, but I think it's a good practice to keep the test function separate from the one that performs the install it might be useful for some.
The solution that worked for me. It based on this answer How to check if a python module exists without importing it
from imp import find_module
def checkPythonmod(mod):
try:
op = find_module(mod)
return True
except ImportError:
return False
NOTE: this solution can't find the module by the name python-nmap
too, I have to use nmap
instead (easy to live with) but in this case the module won't be loaded to the memory whatsoever.
As of Python 3.3, you can use the find_spec() method
import importlib.util
# For illustrative purposes.
package_name = 'pandas'
spec = importlib.util.find_spec(package_name)
if spec is None:
print(package_name +" is not installed")
A better way of doing this is:
import subprocess
import sys
reqs = subprocess.check_output([sys.executable, '-m', 'pip', 'freeze'])
installed_packages = [r.decode().split('==')[0] for r in reqs.split()]
The result:
print(installed_packages)
[
"Django",
"six",
"requests",
]
Check if requests
is installed:
if 'requests' in installed_packages:
# Do something
Why this way? Sometimes you have app name collisions. Importing from the app namespace doesn't give you the full picture of what's installed on the system.
Note, that proposed solution works:
pip install http://some.site/package-name.zip
or any other archive type). python setup.py install
. sudo apt install python-requests
. Cases when it might not work:
python setup.py develop
.pip install -e /path/to/package/source/
.A better way of doing this is:
import pip
installed_packages = pip.get_installed_distributions()
For pip>=10.x use:
from pip._internal.utils.misc import get_installed_distributions
Why this way? Sometimes you have app name collisions. Importing from the app namespace doesn't give you the full picture of what's installed on the system.
As a result, you get a list of pkg_resources.Distribution
objects. See the following as an example:
print installed_packages
[
"Django 1.6.4 (/path-to-your-env/lib/python2.7/site-packages)",
"six 1.6.1 (/path-to-your-env/lib/python2.7/site-packages)",
"requests 2.5.0 (/path-to-your-env/lib/python2.7/site-packages)",
]
Make a list of it:
flat_installed_packages = [package.project_name for package in installed_packages]
[
"Django",
"six",
"requests",
]
Check if requests
is installed:
if 'requests' in flat_installed_packages:
# Do something
In the Terminal type
pip show some_package_name
Example
pip show matplotlib
A quick way is to use python command line tool.
Simply type import <your module name>
You see an error if module is missing.
$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Jun 22 2015, 17:58:13)
>>> import sys
>>> import jocker
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named jocker
$
Is there any chance to use the snippets given below? When I run this code, it returns "module pandas is not installed"
a = "pandas"
try:
import a
print("module ",a," is installed")
except ModuleNotFoundError:
print("module ",a," is not installed")
But when I run the code given below:
try:
import pandas
print("module is installed")
except ModuleNotFoundError:
print("module is not installed")
It returns "module pandas is installed".
What is the difference between them?
I would like to comment to @ice.nicer reply but I cannot, so ... My observations is that packages with dashes are saved with underscores, not only with dots as pointed out by @dwich comment
For example, you do pip3 install sphinx-rtd-theme
, but:
importlib.util.find_spec(sphinx_rtd_theme)
returns an Objectimportlib.util.find_spec(sphinx-rtd-theme)
returns Noneimportlib.util.find_spec(sphinx.rtd.theme)
raises ModuleNotFoundErrorMoreover, some names are totally changed.
For example, you do pip3 install pyyaml
but it is saved simply as yaml
I am using python3.8
Go option #2. If ImportError
is thrown, then the package is not installed (or not in sys.path
).
Hmmm ... the closest I saw to a convenient answer was using the command line to try the import. But I prefer to even avoid that.
How about 'pip freeze | grep pkgname'? I tried it and it works well. It also shows you the version it has and whether it is installed under version control (install) or editable (develop).
You can use this:
class myError(exception):
pass # Or do some thing like this.
try:
import mymodule
except ImportError as e:
raise myError("error was occurred")
If you'd like your script to install missing packages and continue, you could do something like this (on example of 'krbV' module in 'python-krbV' package):
import pip
import sys
for m, pkg in [('krbV', 'python-krbV')]:
try:
setattr(sys.modules[__name__], m, __import__(m))
except ImportError:
pip.main(['install', pkg])
setattr(sys.modules[__name__], m, __import__(m))
As an extension of this answer:
For Python 2.*, pip show <package_name>
will perform the same task.
For example pip show numpy
will return the following or alike:
Name: numpy
Version: 1.11.1
Summary: NumPy: array processing for numbers, strings, records, and objects.
Home-page: http://www.numpy.org
Author: NumPy Developers
Author-email: [email protected]
License: BSD
Location: /home/***/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Requires:
Required-by: smop, pandas, tables, spectrum, seaborn, patsy, odo, numpy-stl, numba, nfft, netCDF4, MDAnalysis, matplotlib, h5py, GridDataFormats, dynd, datashape, Bottleneck, blaze, astropy
if pip list | grep -q \^'PACKAGENAME\s'
# installed ...
else
# not installed ...
fi
If you want to have the check from the terminal, you can run
pip3 show package_name
and if nothing is returned, the package is not installed.
If perhaps you want to automate this check, so that for example you can install it if missing, you can have the following in your bash script:
pip3 show package_name 1>/dev/null #pip for Python 2
if [ $? == 0 ]; then
echo "Installed" #Replace with your actions
else
echo "Not Installed" #Replace with your actions, 'pip3 install --upgrade package_name' ?
fi
Open your command prompt type
pip3 list
You can use the pkg_resources module from setuptools. For example:
import pkg_resources
package_name = 'cool_package'
try:
cool_package_dist_info = pkg_resources.get_distribution(package_name)
except pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound:
print('{} not installed'.format(package_name))
else:
print(cool_package_dist_info)
Note that there is a difference between python module and a python package. A package can contain multiple modules and module's names might not match the package name.
Source: Stackoverflow.com