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

The underlying problem is that I am developing some Django, but on more than one host (with colleagues), all with different settings. I was hoping to do something like this in the project/settings.py file:

from platform import node

settings_files = { 'BMH.lan': 'settings_bmh.py", ... } 

__import__( settings_files[ node() ] )

It seemed a simple solution (thus elegant), but I would agree that it has a smell to it and the simplicity goes out the loop when you have to use logic like what John Millikin posted (thanks). Here's essentially the solution I went with:

from platform import node

from settings_global import *

n = node()

if n == 'BMH.lan':
  from settings_bmh import *
# add your own, here...
else:
  raise Exception("No host settings for '%s'. See settings.py." % node())

Which works fine for our purposes.