Can't import files from parent directory

Question

I can't seem to import python files from a parent directory. I ran the following commands in bash:

echo 'token="AAA111"' > config.py
mkdir scenarios
echo $'from .. import config\nprint(config.token)' > scenarios/test.py
python3 scenarios/test.py

But this gave me the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "scenarios/test.py", line 1, in <module>
    from .. import config
ValueError: attempted relative import beyond top-level package

What did I do wrong? How can I get scenarios/test.py to grab content from config.py?

Answer 1

Relative imports (dots) refer to position within a package not necessarily any directory. *)

If you want to import a module from a parent directory, you would need to add it to the module search path, e.g.:

...
echo $'import config\nprint(config.token)' > scenarios/test.py
PYTHONPATH=. python3 scenarios/test.py

---

*) If you've had the following tree:

.
└── mypkg
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── config.py
    └── scenarios
        ├── __init__.py
        └── test.py

With from .. import config in mypkg/scenarios/test.py as in your example, then this would have worked (called from parent above mypkg/):

python3 -c 'import mypkg.scenarios.test'