How to access python package metadata from within the python console?
With python3.8 being released, you might want to use the new importlib.metadata
[1] module to parse any installed package's metadata.
Getting the author information would look like this:
>>> from importlib import metadata
>>> metadata.metadata('foo')['Author'] # let's say you called your package 'foo'
'Arne'
And getting the version of your install:
>>> from importlib import metadata
>>> metadata.version('foo')
'0.1.0'
Which is a lot more straight forward than what you had to do before.
[1] Also available as backport for Python2.7 and 3.5+ as importlib-metadata, thanks to @ChrisHunt for pointing that out.
One way to access the metadata is to use pip:
import pip
package = [pckg for pckg in pip.get_installed_distributions()
if pckg.project_name == 'package_name'][0]
# package var will contain some metadata: version, project_name and others.
or pkg_resources
from pkg_resources import get_distribution
pkg = get_distribution('package_name') # also contains a metadata