Expose/export class instead of module from python file

Question

I'm exploring Python and how to structure code.

Consider the following project structure

<project root>/controllers/user_controller.py

This file then contains

class UserController:
  def index():
    # Something

When importing this from outside, it ends up as

import controllers.user_controller

controller_instance = controllers.user_controller.UserController()

As a Ruby developer, it feels more natural to do controllers.UserController() or just UserController() if the controllers folder was part of the load path, like in Rails.

Is there a (clean) way to omit the package name? I know I can do from controllers.user_controller import UserController, but I honestly don't fancy the verbosity.

I would like to have one python file per class, but I don't want a new module for each class.

Answer 1

One way to do this is just just import the modules into the parent module. In other words imagine you have a directory structure like this:

mycoolmodule/
mycoolmodule/__init__.py
mycoolmodule/coolclass.py
mycoolmodule/coolutil.py

Code for coolclass.py:

class CoolClass(object):
    ...

Code for coolutil.py:

class CoolUtil(object):
    ...

Code for __init__.py

from coolclass import CoolClass
from coolutil import CoolUtil

Since you made them available at the package level, you can now import them directly from there. For example, this will work:

from mycoolmodule import CoolClass