[Tutor] Still Trying to Understand GAE

[Gerard Flanagan]

admin at gg-lab.net wrote:
> The "google" directoy has an empty __init__.py file (well, if we want
> to be completely correct it contains some commented -#- lines). Same
> for "appengine", "net" and "pyglib". As they all have an __init__.py
> file, they should be consiedered as modules from the python
> interpreter. So, if i run "import google" it imports all google's
> submodules.
> 
> Well, now, the problem: if i create another directory (module) in the
> google dir, it doesn't get imported. Of course i've put in it some .py
> files and an empty __init__.py file.
> 
> 

I would guess that additions have been made to the list of modules in 
sys.path. Where the code that is making these additions is located is 
another matter. Often, people manipulate sys.path from within 
__init__.py files but, as you have seen, this isn't the case for the 
google package - all the __init__.py are empty. To verify, navigate to 
the GAE directory, the one containing the 'google' package, and start a 
python interactive session. Then do

--- import google
--- dir(google)

You don't get 'appengine', 'net' etc. in the output.

So the google package *is* the same as your own package. The confusion 
is probably coming from the fact that you are doing your imports from 
'within' an already running process - the appserver, and this process 
has had a chance to manipulate sys.path before your code runs. Look at 
dev_appserver.py in the sdk and google/appengine/tools/dev_appserver.py 
- don't ask me what that code is doing, but perhaps there is a clue 
there, let us know if you find it!

Regards