How does one do the equivalent of “import * from module” with Python's __import__ function?

Question

Given a string with a module name, how do you import everything in the module as if you had called:

from module import *

i.e. given string

Answer 1

Here's my solution for dynamic naming of local settings files for Django. Note the addition below of a check to not include attributes containing '__' from the imported file. The __name__ global was being overwritten with the module name of the local settings file, which caused setup_environ(), used in manage.py, to have problems.

try:
    import socket
    HOSTNAME = socket.gethostname().replace('.','_')
    # See http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#__import__
    m = __import__(name="settings_%s" % HOSTNAME, globals=globals(), locals=locals(), fromlist="*")
    try:
        attrlist = m.__all__
    except AttributeError:
        attrlist = dir(m)        
    for attr in [a for a in attrlist if '__' not in a]:
        globals()[attr] = getattr(m, attr)

except ImportError, e:
    sys.stderr.write('Unable to read settings_%s.py\n' % HOSTNAME)
    sys.exit(1)