Python: Dynamic "from" import

Python >= 2.7 has importlib (you can pip install importlib to use importlib in earlier versions of python)

module = importlib.import_module("path.to.module")
MyClass = module.MyClass

You're execing your import statement in your function's local namespace, so that's where the names are defined. This namespace goes away when the function ends, leaving you with nothing. What you probably want is something like exec imp_statement in globals().

Why not just use __import__() instead of string-munging? Then you get a reference to your module. You can then fish out the class reference using getattr() on the module object and insert that into globals() (or just pass a dictionary back to the caller, who can then do globals().update() with it).

import sys, os

def getClasses(directory):
    classes = {}
    oldcwd = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(directory)   # change working directory so we know import will work
    for filename in os.listdir(directory):
        if filename.endswith(".py"):
            modname = filename[:-3]
            classes[modname] = getattr(__import__(modname), modname)
    os.setcwd(oldcwd)
    return classes

globals().update(getClasses(r"C:\plugin_classes"))

Something like that. Or rather than updating globals() with your modules, which could clobber a global variable you care about, just leave the classes in the dictionary and reference them from there:

classes = getClasess(r"C:\plugin_classes")
for clas in classes.itervalues():
    instance = clas(1, 2, 3)       # instantiate
    instance.dosomething_cool(42)  # call method