Circular (or cyclic) imports in Python

Question

What will happen if two modules import each other?

To generalize the problem, what about the cyclic imports in Python?

Answer 1

There are a lot of great answers here. While there are usually quick solutions to the problem, some of which feel more pythonic than others, if you have the luxury of doing some refactoring, another approach is to analyze the organization of your code, and try to remove the circular dependency. You may find, for example, that you have:

File a.py

from b import B

class A:
    @staticmethod
    def save_result(result):
        print('save the result')

    @staticmethod
    def do_something_a_ish(param):
        A.save_result(A.use_param_like_a_would(param))

    @staticmethod
    def do_something_related_to_b(param):
        B.do_something_b_ish(param)

File b.py

from a import A

class B:
    @staticmethod
    def do_something_b_ish(param):
        A.save_result(B.use_param_like_b_would(param))

In this case, just moving one static method to a separate file, say c.py:

File c.py

def save_result(result):
    print('save the result')

will allow removing the save_result method from A, and thus allow removing the import of A from a in b:

Refactored File a.py

from b import B
from c import save_result

class A:
    @staticmethod
    def do_something_a_ish(param):
        A.save_result(A.use_param_like_a_would(param))

    @staticmethod
    def do_something_related_to_b(param):
        B.do_something_b_ish(param)

Refactored File b.py

from c import save_result

class B:
    @staticmethod
    def do_something_b_ish(param):
        save_result(B.use_param_like_b_would(param))

In summary, if you have a tool (e.g. pylint or PyCharm) that reports on methods that can be static, just throwing a staticmethod decorator on them might not be the best way to silence the warning. Even though the method seems related to the class, it might be better to separate it out, especially if you have several closely related modules that might need the same functionality and you intend to practice DRY principles.