Django custom management commands: AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Command'

Question

I am trying to make a custom management command as show in the docs here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/custom-management-commands/

When I try to run the command from my project directory I am experiencing the following error:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Command'

Here is the file:

#event_expiration.py
from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand, CommandError
from app.models import Event
import datetime

class Command(BaseCommand):
    help = 'deletes expired events'

    def handle(self, *args, **options):

        today = datetime.datetime.now()
        events = Event.objects.filter(date=datetime.date(2011,11,11))

        for e in events:
            e.delete()

        self.stdout.write('Expired events successfully deleted.')

The command I am running is :

$ python manage.py event_expiration

I've made sure I am adding the event_expiration.py file within management and commands folders and that those folders have init files. those are in one of my app folders.

Am I overlooking something here? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

EDIT:

Fellow SO user Yuji helped me attempt to debug this a bit but we are still stumped. heres what we did:

First, the full traceback and command:

(venv)matt@inspirion14z:~/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it$ python manage.py event_expiration
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/home/matt/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 443, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/home/matt/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 382, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/home/matt/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 261, in fetch_command
    klass = load_command_class(app_name, subcommand)
  File "/home/matt/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 70, in load_command_class
    return module.Command()
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Command'

To see what was going on at django/core/management/init.py", line 70 I placed import pdb; pdb.set_trace() within the file.

While in debug mode we tried:

module.__file__ 

to check if the module was where expected, and it indeed was, with an output of:

'/home/matt/Dropbox/PROD/ersvp.it/app/management/commands/event_expiration.pyc'

Next, we tried manually importing Command in the shell:

>>> from app.management.commands.event_expiration import Command 
Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<console>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: cannot import name Command

Still scratching my head!

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue and the problem was that my command class wasn't called exactly Command, as the docs says. Example:

class Command(NoArgsCommand):
    # Do something here

Answer 2

What is your file structure like? It should be like so:

app/
    __init__.py
    management/
        __init__.py
        commands/
            __init__.py
            event_expiration.py

If the structure is as above, try the following:

python manage.py shell
>>> from app.management.commands import event_expiration
>>> dir(event_expiration)
['Account', 'BaseCommand', 'Callback', 'Command', 'CommandError', 'Comment', 'Status', 'User', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', 'clean_phone_number', 'csv', 'models', 'os', 're']

I've listed the pure output of running dir on a management command of my own. Give that a try, and report back what is available to the module. You might find yourself getting an error at this point, which may help diagnose. I'm suspecting a problem with importing django itself. I'm guessing the python manage.py shell will fail, which will mean it's not a problem with your command, but a problem with the project.

Edit 2:

The fact that check_expiration was visible in your dir output supports my theory that the folder structure is amiss in someway. Unless there's specifically a function named that within your module.

Please do the following and show the output:

cd /path/to/app/
find .

Also, show the entire contents of your event_expiration.py file, and the contents of your management/commands/__init__.py file. Be wary of spaces mixed with tabs as whitespace also.