What Are Module Members

Python Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟What Are Module Members

This section provides a quick introduction module members, which refer to variables (or attributes), functions and classes defined in a given module. 'dir(module)' function can be used to list all members in a given module.

What Are Module Members? Module members refer to variables (or attributes), functions and classes defined in a given module.

Module members are also considered as names defined a given module. You can use the dir(module) built-in function to list all member in a given module.

Like instance members (attributes and methods), module members can be accessed using the attribute reference expression (module.member). This is expected, because a loaded module is also an instance of the "module" class.

The following code example shows you how to insert a new attribute into a module, and how to list all module members.

>>> import module_test as x
Hi there! - from 'module_test' module
Welcome on board! - from 'first' class

# add a new module attribute
x.author = 'Herong'

# list all module members
>>> dir(x)
['__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__',
 '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__', 'first', 'help', 'version', 
 'author']

>>> x.__name__
'module_test'

>>> x.__file__
'/home/herong/module_test.py'

>>> x.__loader__
<_frozen_importlib_external.SourceFileLoader object at 0x10a203250>