Python – Reload module

I’ve recently added a new function to my library, called reloadModule. I was tired of doing reload() on everything.. So just use this useful function to easily reload a module!

import sys, types

def gReloadModule(inModule):
	"""Reload the given module and all children"""

	# Get a reference to each loaded module
	loaded_modules = dict([
		(key, value) for key, value in sys.modules.items()
		if key.startswith(inModule.__name__) and isinstance(value, types.ModuleType)])

	# Delete references to these loaded modules from sys.modules
	for key in loaded_modules:
		del sys.modules[key]

	# Load each of the modules again
	# Make old modules share state with new modules
	for key in loaded_modules:
		print 're-loading %s' % key
		newmodule = __import__(key)
		oldmodule = loaded_modules[key]
		oldmodule.__dict__.clear()
		oldmodule.__dict__.update(newmodule.__dict__)