Django ORM on Standalone Applications

Question

I followed this link to use Django's ORM on my stand alone application in python. manage.py sql 'application_name' and manage.py syncdb is working well and tables were created when I performed syncdb. The problem I am encountering is when I am running the actual script (for this case, it's dparser.py) that will handle DB transactions, I am encountering a "TypeError: relative imports require the 'package' argument". Below is the stacktrace:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "dparser.py", line 23, in <module>
    from dmodel.models import *
  File "/home/<user>/d/dapp/dmodel/models.py", line 1, in <module>
    from django.db import models
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/__init__.py", line 11, in <module>
    if DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS not in settings.DATABASES:
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 184, in inner
    self._setup()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 42, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 93, in __init__
    mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/importlib.py", line 28, in import_module
    raise TypeError("relative imports require the 'package' argument")
TypeError: relative imports require the 'package' argument

Below are the contents of my settings.py, models.py and dparser.py:

settings.py:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',   
        'NAME': 'd',
        'USER': 'root',
        'PASSWORD': '<password>',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '3306',
    }
}
INSTALLED_APPS = ("dapp.dmodel",)

models.py:

from django.db import models
from django.db.models import Max


class Topics(models.Model):
     topic_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
     topic = models.CharField(max_length=1000)

class Links(models.Model):
     link_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
     topic = models.ForeignKey(Topics)
     link = models.CharField(max_length=1000)

def getLastId(tag):
     ...
     return lastid

dparser.py (partial):

from django.conf import settings
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = ".settings.py"
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',   
        'NAME': 'd',
        'USER': 'root',
        'PASSWORD': '<password>',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '3306',
    }
}
INSTALLED_APPS = ("dapp.dmodel",)

from dmodel.models import * # --> This is were the exception occurs

Hope somebody can help me out here. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Looking at the code of django.utils.importlib.py where the execption is raised you see that your settings file name is causing the problem:

if name.startswith('.'):
    if not package:
        raise TypeError("relative imports require the 'package' argument")

Don't use .settings.py as the name for your settings file, use something that does not start with a '.' and it will solve this particular error.