How to load abstract syntax tree of a python module by its name?

Question

Let's say the name of the module is available in form of a string rather than module object. How do I locate its source code location and load the abstract syntax tree (if the source code is present)?

Answer 1

I'd take the problem in three steps:

1. Import the module by name. This should be relatively easy using importlib.import_module, though you could bodge up your own version with the builtin __import__ if you needed to.
2. Get the source code for the module. Using inspect.getsource is probably the easiest way (but you could also just try open(the_module.__file__).read() and it is likely to work).
3. Parse the source into an AST. This should be easy with ast.parse. Even for this step, the library isn't essential, as you can use the builtin compile instead, as long as you pass the appropriate flag (ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST appears to be 1024 on my system, so compile(source, filename, 'exec', 1024) should work).