python file names colide with global scope variables/modules

[franciscobmacedo]

The problem

If a component directory has python files in it that are named after some global scope variable name or module of another library, it overrides that variable. This causes a big problem: I can't name my python files after any global scope variable in my project.

Example

I have a simple component called "select". the file structure is something like this:

 sampleproject/
    ├── components/             
    │   └── select/           
    │       ├── select.py     # <- the problem
    │       └── template.html 
    ├── sampleproject/
    ├── manage.py
    └── requirements.txt

However, I also use celery, which uses the select I/O module from the standard library. When launching a celery task, it was causing this error:

AttributeError: module 'select' has no attribute 'select'

Mostly because in my component select.py file I don't really have anything named select. For testing purposes I added an empty "django.py" file in that directory, and sure enough the same problem happens:

ImportError: cannot import name 'VERSION' from 'django' (/path/to/project/components/select/django.py)

PS: The variable names inside the python file and the registered component name don't cause any issues. It's only the python file(s) name(s) inside a component directory.

Current solution

If I set the COMPONENTS settings variable to disable autodiscover, this is all fixed:

COMPONENTS = {
    "libraries": [
        "components.select",
    ],
     "autodiscover": False,
}

Proposed ideas

I understand the problem lies somewhere in the import_file function, where each component is registered as an independent module and therefore overriding already existing ones.

I'm not adding this problem as an issue because there's a solution for it. However, I believe this is a limitation: I think one should be able to name a component python file "select.py" and not worry about repercussions. Or, at least, maybe this could be more explicit in the README.md?

I don't want by all means complain, I love this project, so thank you very much for it!! Just thought this can be a problem for others as well.

Thoughts?

[EmilStenstrom]

@franciscobmacedo Thanks for a really well specified bug report.

I agree that this is not optimal behaviour. There's probably an easy fix that entails putting the components in the a component specific scope instead of the global one. I'll happily accept patches that changes that.

Let's continue the discussion in this issue: #431