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

Circular imports can be confusing because import does two things:

1. it executes imported module code
2. adds imported module to importing module global symbol table

The former is done only once, while the latter at each import statement. Circular import creates situation when importing module uses imported one with partially executed code. In consequence it will not see objects created after import statement. Below code sample demonstrates it.

Circular imports are not the ultimate evil to be avoided at all cost. In some frameworks like Flask they are quite natural and tweaking your code to eliminate them does not make the code better.

main.py

print 'import b'
import b
print 'a in globals() {}'.format('a' in globals())
print 'import a'
import a
print 'a in globals() {}'.format('a' in globals())
if __name__ == '__main__':
    print 'imports done'
    print 'b has y {}, a is b.a {}'.format(hasattr(b, 'y'), a is b.a)

b.by

print "b in, __name__ = {}".format(__name__)
x = 3
print 'b imports a'
import a
y = 5
print "b out"

a.py

print 'a in, __name__ = {}'.format(__name__)
print 'a imports b'
import b
print 'b has x {}'.format(hasattr(b, 'x'))
print 'b has y {}'.format(hasattr(b, 'y'))
print "a out"

python main.py output with comments

import b
b in, __name__ = b    # b code execution started
b imports a
a in, __name__ = a    # a code execution started
a imports b           # b code execution is already in progress
b has x True
b has y False         # b defines y after a import,
a out
b out
a in globals() False  # import only adds a to main global symbol table 
import a
a in globals() True
imports done
b has y True, a is b.a True # all b objects are available