In Python 3.0–3.3 you would use: imp.reload(module)

The BDFL has answered this question.

However, imp was deprecated in 3.4, in favour of importlib (thanks @Stefan!).

I think, therefore, you’d now use importlib.reload(module), although I’m not sure.

It can be especially difficult to delete a module if it is not pure Python.

Here is some information from: How do I really delete an imported module?

You can use sys.getrefcount() to find out the actual number of references.

>>> import sys, empty, os
>>> sys.getrefcount(sys)
9
>>> sys.getrefcount(os)
6
>>> sys.getrefcount(empty)
3

Numbers greater than 3 indicate that it will be hard to get rid of the module. The homegrown "empty" (containing nothing) module should be garbage collected after

>>> del sys.modules["empty"]
>>> del empty

as the third reference is an artifact of the getrefcount() function.

reload(module), but only if it's completely stand-alone. If anything else has a reference to the module (or any object belonging to the module), then you'll get subtle and curious errors caused by the old code hanging around longer than you expected, and things like isinstance not working across different versions of the same code.

If you have one-way dependencies, you must also reload all modules that depend on the reloaded module to get rid of all the references to the old code. And then reload modules that depend on the reloaded modules, recursively.

If you have circular dependencies, which is very common for example when you are dealing with reloading a package, you must unload all the modules in the group in one go. You can't do this with reload() because it will re-import each module before its dependencies have been refreshed, allowing old references to creep into new modules.

The only way to do it in this case is to hack sys.modules, which is kind of unsupported. You'd have to go through and delete each sys.modules entry you wanted to be reloaded on next import, and also delete entries whose values are None to deal with an implementation issue to do with caching failed relative imports. It's not terribly nice but as long as you have a fully self-contained set of dependencies that doesn't leave references outside its codebase, it's workable.

It's probably best to restart the server. :-)

For Python 2 use built-in function reload:

reload(module)

For Python 2 and Python 3.2—3.3 use reload from module imp:

import imp
imp.reload(module)

For Python ≥3.4, imp is deprecated in favor of importlib, so use this:

import importlib
importlib.reload(module)

or:

from importlib import reload
reload(module)

TL;DR:

Python ≥ 3.4: importlib.reload(module)
Python 3.2 — 3.3: imp.reload(module)
Python 2: reload(module)

if 'myModule' in sys.modules:  
    del sys.modules["myModule"]

The following code allows you Python 2/3 compatibility:

try:
    reload
except NameError:
    # Python 3
    from imp import reload

The you can use it as reload() in both versions which makes things simpler.

The accepted answer doesn't handle the from X import Y case. This code handles it and the standard import case as well:

def importOrReload(module_name, *names):
    import sys

    if module_name in sys.modules:
        reload(sys.modules[module_name])
    else:
        __import__(module_name, fromlist=names)

    for name in names:
        globals()[name] = getattr(sys.modules[module_name], name)

# use instead of: from dfly_parser import parseMessages
importOrReload("dfly_parser", "parseMessages")

In the reloading case, we reassign the top level names to the values stored in the newly reloaded module, which updates them.

If you are not in a server, but developing and need to frequently reload a module, here's a nice tip.

First, make sure you are using the excellent IPython shell, from the Jupyter Notebook project. After installing Jupyter, you can start it with ipython, or jupyter console, or even better, jupyter qtconsole, which will give you a nice colorized console with code completion in any OS.

Now in your shell, type:

%load_ext autoreload
%autoreload 2

Now, every time you run your script, your modules will be reloaded.

Beyond the 2, there are other options of the autoreload magic:

%autoreload
Reload all modules (except those excluded by %aimport) automatically now.

%autoreload 0
Disable automatic reloading.

%autoreload 1
Reload all modules imported with %aimport every time before executing the Python code typed.

%autoreload 2
Reload all modules (except those excluded by %aimport) every time before
executing the Python code typed.

Sure, it will also work on a Jupyter Notebook.

This is the modern way of reloading a module:

from importlib import reload

If you want to support versions of Python older than 3.5, use this:

from sys import version_info
if version_info[0] < 3:
    pass # Python 2 has built in reload
elif version_info[0] == 3 and version_info[1] <= 4:
    from imp import reload # Python 3.0 - 3.4 
else:
    from importlib import reload # Python 3.5+

This defines a reload method which can be called with a module to reload it. For example, reload(math) will reload the math module.

For those like me who want to unload all modules (when running in the Python interpreter under Emacs):

   for mod in sys.modules.values():
      reload(mod)

More information is in Reloading Python modules.

Enthought Traits has a module that works fairly well for this.

It will reload any module that has been changed, and update other modules and instanced objects that are using it. It does not work most of the time with __very_private__ methods, and can choke on class inheritance, but it saves me crazy amounts of time from having to restart the host application when writing PyQt guis, or stuff that runs inside programs such as Maya or Nuke. It doesn't work maybe 20-30 % of the time, but it's still incredibly helpful.

Enthought's package doesn't reload files the moment they change - you have to call it explicitely - but that shouldn't be all that hard to implement if you really need it

Other option. See that Python default importlib.reload will just reimport the library passed as an argument. It won't reload the libraries that your lib import. If you changed a lot of files and have a somewhat complex package to import, you must do a deep reload.

If you have IPython or Jupyter installed, you can use a function to deep reload all libs:

from IPython.lib.deepreload import reload as dreload
dreload(foo)

If you don't have Jupyter, install it with this command in your shell:

pip3 install jupyter

Those who are using python 3 and reload from importlib.

If you have problems like it seems that module doesn't reload... That is because it needs some time to recompile pyc (up to 60 sec).I writing this hint just that you know if you have experienced this kind of problem.

Edit (Answer V2)

The solution from before is good for just getting the reset information, but it will not change all the references (more than reload but less then required). To actually set all the references as well, I had to go into the garbage collector, and rewrite the references there. Now it works like a charm!

Note that this will not work if the GC is turned off, or if reloading data that's not monitored by the GC. If you don't want to mess with the GC, the original answer might be enough for you.

New code:

import importlib
import inspect
import gc
from enum import EnumMeta
from weakref import ref


_readonly_attrs = {'__annotations__', '__call__', '__class__', '__closure__', '__code__', '__defaults__', '__delattr__',
               '__dict__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__func__', '__ge__', '__get__',
               '__getattribute__', '__globals__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__',
               '__kwdefaults__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__module__', '__name__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__qualname__',
               '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__self__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__',
               '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', '__members__', '__mro__', '__itemsize__', '__isabstractmethod__',
               '__basicsize__', '__base__'}


def reset_module(module, inner_modules_also=True):
    """
    This function is a stronger form of importlib's `reload` function. What it does, is that aside from reloading a
    module, it goes to the old instance of the module, and sets all the (not read-only) attributes, functions and classes
    to be the reloaded-module's
    :param module: The module to reload (module reference, not the name)
    :param inner_modules_also: Whether to treat ths module as a package as well, and reload all the modules within it.
    """

    # For the case when the module is actually a package
    if inner_modules_also:
        submods = {submod for _, submod in inspect.getmembers(module)
                   if (type(submod).__name__ == 'module') and (submod.__package__.startswith(module.__name__))}
        for submod in submods:
            reset_module(submod, True)

    # First, log all the references before reloading (because some references may be changed by the reload operation).
    module_tree = _get_tree_references_to_reset_recursively(module, module.__name__)

    new_module = importlib.reload(module)
    _reset_item_recursively(module, module_tree, new_module)


def _update_referrers(item, new_item):
    refs = gc.get_referrers(item)

    weak_ref_item = ref(item)
    for coll in refs:
        if type(coll) == dict:
            enumerator = coll.keys()
        elif type(coll) == list:
            enumerator = range(len(coll))
        else:
            continue

        for key in enumerator:

            if weak_ref_item() is None:
                # No refs are left in the GC
                return

            if coll[key] is weak_ref_item():
                coll[key] = new_item

def _get_tree_references_to_reset_recursively(item, module_name, grayed_out_item_ids = None):
    if grayed_out_item_ids is None:
        grayed_out_item_ids = set()

    item_tree = dict()
    attr_names = set(dir(item)) - _readonly_attrs
    for sub_item_name in attr_names:

        sub_item = getattr(item, sub_item_name)
        item_tree[sub_item_name] = [sub_item, None]

        try:
            # Will work for classes and functions defined in that module.
            mod_name = sub_item.__module__
        except AttributeError:
            mod_name = None

        # If this item was defined within this module, deep-reset
        if (mod_name is None) or (mod_name != module_name) or (id(sub_item) in grayed_out_item_ids) \
                or isinstance(sub_item, EnumMeta):
            continue

        grayed_out_item_ids.add(id(sub_item))
        item_tree[sub_item_name][1] = \
            _get_tree_references_to_reset_recursively(sub_item, module_name, grayed_out_item_ids)

    return item_tree


def _reset_item_recursively(item, item_subtree, new_item):

    # Set children first so we don't lose the current references.
    if item_subtree is not None:
        for sub_item_name, (sub_item, sub_item_tree) in item_subtree.items():

            try:
                new_sub_item = getattr(new_item, sub_item_name)
            except AttributeError:
                # The item doesn't exist in the reloaded module. Ignore.
                continue

            try:
                # Set the item
                _reset_item_recursively(sub_item, sub_item_tree, new_sub_item)
            except Exception as ex:
                pass

    _update_referrers(item, new_item)