Import py file in another directory in Jupyter notebook

There is no simple way to import python files in another directory. This is unrelated to the jupyter notebook

Here are 3 solutions to your problem

1. You can add the directory containing the file you want to import to your path and then import the file like this:

import sys  
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/application/app/folder')

import file

2. You can create a local module by having an empty __init__.py file in the folder you want to import. There are some weird rules regarding the folder hierarchy that you have to take into consideration.

3. You can create a module for the file you wish to import and install it globally.

Assuming you have a folder name Jupyter and you wish to import modules (employee) from another folder named nn_webserver.

visualizing it:

do this:

import sys
import os

module_path = os.path.abspath(os.path.join('..'))
if module_path not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(module_path+"\\nn_webserver")

from employee import motivation_to_work

see additional information here from @metakermit

I would suggest to install functions.py as a package in your virtual environment. There are some benefits of this:

1. You can access functions.py file from any iPython notebook located in any place, but at the given environment (kernel).
2. Once you changed any function in functions.py file, you don't need to reload your iPython notebook again and again. It will automatically reload every change.

This is the way how it can be done:

• Create setup.py file (https://docs.python.org/2/distutils/setupscript.html) in your project folder
• Activate your virtual environment, go to your project location, and use this command pip install -e .

• Then, in your iPython notebook:

  %load_ext autoreload

  %autoreload 1

  %aimport yourproject.functions

  from functions import *

That's it!

I've solved this problem in the past by creating a symbolic link in the directory where the Jupyter notebook is located to the library it wants to load, so that python behaves as if the module is in the correct path. So for the example above, you would run the following command once per directory inside a Jupyter cell:

!ln -s /user/project/functions.py functions.py

and then you could import with

import functions

Note: I've only tried this on Linux and Mac Os, so I can't vouch for Windows.

In addition to the answer from adhg, I recommend using Pathlib, for compatibility between Linux/Windows/WSL paths formats:

Assuming the following folder structure:

.
├── work
|   ├── notebook.ipynb
|   └── my_python_file.py
├── py
|   ├──modules
|   |    ├──__init__.py # empty
|   |    └──preparations.py
|   ├──__init__.py # empty
|   └── tools.py
├──.git
└── README.md

To load tools.py or preparations.py in my_python_file.py (or in notebook notebook.ipynb):

import sys
from pathlib import Path

# in jupyter (lab / notebook), based on notebook path
module_path = str(Path.cwd().parents[0] / "py")
# in standard python
module_path = str(Path.cwd(__file__).parents[0] / "py")

if module_path not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(module_path)

from modules import preparations
import tools
...