How to import and use a module with one line

Question

I have this code that loads the natural gas storage numbers from the internet.

from urllib.request import urlopen
print(int(str(urlopen("http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/wngsr.txt").read()).split("\\n")[4].split(" ")[2]))

How could I do this in one line? More specifically, I was wondering how I could get rid of the import line and do something like this:

print(int(str(urllib.request.urlopen("http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/wngsr.txt").read()).split("\\n")[4].split(" ")[2]))

(I changed the urlopen call to urllib.request.urlopen. It would be sort of like Java, if you use the fully qualified name, you don't need an import statement.)

Barbican

You always need the import – Marchesa

Check out the dunder__import__ builtin. But this is a bad baaaad idea. – Parasitic

Python imports do not simply create a reference in the local namespace to that class or function (like Java), they also run the module's __init__.py code to set up the environment to support the module's functions and classes. That's why they always need to be imported before being used. – Mahogany

Also, I'd like to ask myself a question 'why' would I want to do that? Unless one line is super fast or something - that isn't the case in your particular example! – Kutchins

@Parasitic Lol I get that, but when I used import, I couldn't call functions from it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? – Barbican

@TheTromboneWilly: If that's the real problem, then that is a better question. Otherwise this is an XY problem. – Lohr

@AaronD: I found it useful when you try to run some short python code as part of a shell script for example. Being able to pass the entire code as a single line to the python interpreter makes it a lot neater – Cryptic

Answer 1

You always need the import, however you can still use semi-colons to separate statements:

from urllib.request import urlopen; print(int(str(urllib.request.urlopen("http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/wngsr.txt").read()).split("\\n")[4].split(" ")[2]))
#             note the semi-colon ^

Marchesa

I'm not saying I'd ever use it in real life, I just wanted to know if it was possible. Thanks – Barbican

Why would you do that? To run commands in shell. Here's a oneliner I use almost every day to count the total number of csv records in a file that accepts line breaks inside strings: cat *.csv | python -c "import csv; import sys; print(sum(1 for i in csv.reader(sys.stdin)))" – Ekaterinburg

Answer 2

When trying out the suggestion by Zizouz212, I found this works

print(int(str(__import__('urllib').request.urlopen("http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/wngsr.txt").read()).split("\\n")[4].split(" ")[2]))

Otherwise

LOL I forgot about this question. This is a good idea, but I think you need to add the fromlist parameter to import the submodules. So the __import__ will look this this: __import__('urllib', fromlist=['request']) – Barbican

Answer 3

E.g. Use like this:

python -c 'import cyrtranslit; print(cyrtranslit.to_latin("бла-бла-бла", "ru"))'

Or like this:

python -c 'import cyrtranslit,sys; print(cyrtranslit.to_latin(sys.argv[1], "ru"))' 'бла-бла-бла'

Result: bla-bla-bla

Or like this:

python -c 'import sys; from urllib import parse; print(parse.unquote(sys.argv[1]))' 'bla%20bla%20bla'

Result: bla bla bla

Confederacy

I previously downvoted this, but this does actually work. I was using the incorrect -m flag. This works perfectly for me and should be the accepted answer. – Murder