from . import stuff in python

Question

I am trying to understand this piece of code written in python in a Django App

from . import views

I haven't come across anything like this in the python documentation. Can somebody explain ?

Answer 1

It's a relative import. It lets you import modules from the same package without specifying the package name. So, if you're in the foo.views module, instead of:

from foo.models import Model

you can do:

from .models import Model

This lets you change the package name without refactoring all the imports in that package.

Answer 2

This was introduced with PEP-328, and describes a relative import.

Essentially, it means: from the current package/directory import views.