How to rename a package in Python

Python offers its users a vast selection of built-in and installable libraries and packages, allowing developers to access functionalities they might need for their programs. These libraries and packages can streamline the development process and reduce the time required to code efficient solutions.

We can also rename the packages locally for our convenience, which we will cover in this Answer.

For our example, we'll see how to rename the pandas package. First, let's see how we would typically import this package:

import pandas
url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-spaCy/main/Chapter10/data/restaurants.json'
dataset = pandas.read_json(url, encoding = 'utf-8')
print(dataset.head())

In the code above:

  • Line 1: We import the pandas library.

  • Line 3: We create a variable called url which holds the URL of a dataset we wish to access.

  • Line 4: We use the pandas.read_json() function to load the dataset into an aptly named variable dataset.

  • Line 5: We call the dataset.head() function and print the first five rows from the dataset.

Using a renamed package

Now let's see how we can rename the package and then use the renamed package. To rename a package, we can use the as keyword in Python as shown below:

import pandas as pd
Using the as keyword to rename a package

As shown above, we can use pd instead of pandas when we want to use functions available in the pandas library. Let's see this in action with the previous example:

import pandas as pd
url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-spaCy/main/Chapter10/data/restaurants.json'
dataset = pd.read_json(url, encoding = 'utf-8')
print(dataset.head())

The code largely remains the same as before and will have the same output. The only differences we have are on Line 1 and Line 4:

  • Line 1: We simply add the as keyword that tells the interpreter that pd will now refer to the pandas library.

  • Line 4: We replace the pandas.read_json() with pd.read_json() as pd will always refer to pandas in our code.

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