How to find out which functions a Python module contains

Question

Hi. Whenever I import a module in Python, I have to go looking for the functions it provides by searching it on the internet. Is there a way that I can get the function names that a modules provides using python itself?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this. Python allows you to get the names that a module provides. You can find it by using the dir() method. Refer to the below example:

>>> import pandas
>>> dir(pandas)

['Categorical', 'CategoricalIndex', 'DataFrame', 'DateOffset', 'DatetimeIndex', 'ExcelFile', 'ExcelWriter', 'Expr', 'Float64Index', 'Grouper', 'HDFStore', 'Index', 'IndexSlice', 'Int64Index', 'Interval', 'IntervalIndex', 'MultiIndex', 'NaT', 'Panel', 'Period', 'PeriodIndex', 'RangeIndex', 'Series', 'SparseArray', 'SparseDataFrame', 'SparseSeries', 'Term', 'TimeGrouper', 'Timedelta', 'TimedeltaIndex', 'Timestamp', 'UInt64Index', 'WidePanel', '_DeprecatedModule', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__docformat__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__', '__version__', '_hashtable', '_lib', '_libs', '_np_version_under1p10', '_np_version_under1p11', '_np_version_under1p12', '_np_version_under1p13', '_np_version_under1p14', '_np_version_under1p15', '_tslib', '_version', 'api', 'bdate_range', 'compat', 'concat', 'core', 'crosstab', 'cut', 'date_range', 'datetime', 'datetools', 'describe_option', 'errors', 'eval', 'factorize', 'get_dummies', 'get_option', 'get_store', 'groupby', 'infer_freq', 'interval_range', 'io', 'isna', 'isnull', 'json', 'lib', 'lreshape', 'match', 'melt', 'merge', 'merge_asof', 'merge_ordered', 'notna', 'notnull', 'np', 'offsets', 'option_context', 'options', 'pandas', 'parser', 'period_range', 'pivot', 'pivot_table', 'plot_params', 'plotting', 'pnow', 'qcut', 'read_clipboard', 'read_csv', 'read_excel', 'read_feather', 'read_fwf', 'read_gbq', 'read_hdf', 'read_html', 'read_json', 'read_msgpack', 'read_parquet', 'read_pickle', 'read_sas', 'read_sql', 'read_sql_query', 'read_sql_table', 'read_stata', 'read_table', 'reset_option', 'scatter_matrix', 'set_eng_float_format', 'set_option', 'show_versions', 'test', 'testing', 'timedelta_range', 'to_datetime', 'to_msgpack', 'to_numeric', 'to_pickle', 'to_timedelta', 'tools', 'tseries', 'tslib', 'unique', 'util', 'value_counts', 'wide_to_long']