How to mock an import

You can assign to sys.modules['B'] before importing A to get what you want:

test.py:

import sys
sys.modules['B'] = __import__('mock_B')
import A

print(A.B.__name__)

A.py:

import B

Note B.py does not exist, but when running test.py no error is returned and print(A.B.__name__) prints mock_B. You still have to create a mock_B.py where you mock B's actual functions/variables/etc. Or you can just assign a Mock() directly:

test.py:

import sys
sys.modules['B'] = Mock()
import A

The builtin __import__ can be mocked with the 'mock' library for more control:

# Store original __import__
orig_import = __import__
# This will be the B module
b_mock = mock.Mock()

def import_mock(name, *args):
    if name == 'B':
        return b_mock
    return orig_import(name, *args)

with mock.patch('__builtin__.__import__', side_effect=import_mock):
    import A

Say A looks like:

import B

def a():
    return B.func()

A.a() returns b_mock.func() which can be mocked also.

b_mock.func.return_value = 'spam'
A.a()  # returns 'spam'

Note for Python 3: As stated in the changelog for 3.0, __builtin__ is now named builtins:

Renamed module __builtin__ to builtins (removing the underscores, adding an ‘s’).

The code in this answer works fine if you replace __builtin__ by builtins for Python 3.