How to use third-party package in a QGIS plugin?

Question

I'm developing a QGIS plugin and I would like to use arrow or requests packages as I'm used to manipulate dates and REST APIs.

QGIS does not come with these packages (at less arrow), so when I try to access my plugin in QGIS I've got :

"ImportError: No module named arrow"

How can I specify my requirements?

Answer 1

Thanks for the resources. I tried to use paver but it seems to be a bit painful to implement, for a non-expert developer, no?

Furthermore, by default, pip is not installed even with the OSGeo4W installer. Could you paver script works without it?

To install it, I followed these instructions and I produced a batch file (see below) but doesn't solve the admin rights problems:

@echo off
Title "PyPi in QGIS"
Echo "Adding 3rd party modules in QGIS"

REM securely download get-pip install script
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

REM install pip
python get-pip.py

REM install 3rd party modules
pip install --user arrow
pip install --user requests
pip install --user requests[security]

@echo on
pause