def resolve_name(import_name, silent=False):
    # force the import name to automatically convert to strings
    if PY3:
        unicode = str
    else:
        global unicode
    if isinstance(import_name, unicode):
        import_name = str(import_name)
    try:
        if ':' in import_name:
            module, obj = import_name.split(':', 1)
        elif '.' in import_name:
            module, obj = import_name.rsplit('.', 1)
        else:
            return __import__(import_name)
            # __import__ is not able to handle unicode strings in the fromlist
        # if the module is a package
        if isinstance(obj, unicode):
            obj = obj.encode('utf-8')
        if isinstance(obj, bytes):
            obj = obj.decode('utf-8')
        try:
            return getattr(__import__(module, None, None, [obj]), obj)
        except (ImportError, AttributeError):
            # support importing modules not yet set up by the parent module
            # (or package for that matter)
            modname = module + '.' + obj
            __import__(modname)
            return sys.modules[modname]
    except ImportError as e:
        if not silent:
            raise ImportStringError(import_name, e)
Imports an object based on a string.  This is useful if you want to
dataset/ETHPy150Open tarekziade/boom/boom/util.py/resolve_name