Python libraries

Libraries
XBMC Python comes with all the standard modules from Python 2.6. If you need to find a list of them, you can use the following command to generate a list of built-ins:

import sys print sys.builtin_module_names

For a list of the other standard libraries, find the file "python26.zlib" in your XBMC installations /system/python/ folder, and open it with an archive viewer such as WinRAR or 7-zip.

Custom libraries
In addition to the built-ins and standard libraries, XBMC Python uses a handful of custom libraries to expose XBMC functionality to Python.

Up to date documentation about these modules can be found at http://mirrors.xbmc.org/docs/python-docs/

Installing additional libraries
Additional libraries can be installed by adding them to the /system/python/Lib folder of your XBMC installation. A Python module placed in this folder can be called from any script or plugin within XBMC.

Of course, you can also place the library files you want to import in your script or plugin folder, directly in the root or in a subfolder. A popular method is to add a "resources" subfolder to your script's folder, and add it to the path within your script.

If you are going to use a module that will possibly used by more add-on you can better create a separate add-on of this so more add-ons can make use of it. Be sure to checkout which modules are already available from our XBMC repository by looking at http://mirrors.xbmc.org/addons/ and choose the XBMC version your are developing for.