pkgutil.get_data()

pkgutil.get_data(package, resource)

Get a resource from a package.

This is a wrapper for the PEP 302 loader get_data() API. The package argument should be the name of a package, in standard module format (foo.bar). The resource argument should be in the form of a relative filename, using / as the path separator. The parent directory name .. is not allowed, and nor is a rooted name (starting with a /).

The function returns a binary string that is the contents of the specified resource.

For packages located in the filesystem, which have already been imported, this is the rough equivalent of:

d = os.path.dirname(sys.modules[package].__file__)
data = open(os.path.join(d, resource), 'rb').read()

If the package cannot be located or loaded, or it uses a PEP 302 loader which does not support get_data(), then None is returned.