ImportError: cannot import name '_ColumnEntity' from 'sqlalchemy.orm.query'

Question

After installing apache-superset using pip in virtual environment, I run:

superset upgrade db   

I run into the following error:

ImportError: cannot import name '_ColumnEntity' from 'sqlalchemy.orm.query' (/Users/ahmedawny/supersetenv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/orm/query.py)

Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The core reason for this is that sqlalchemy 1.4 shipped, so it is now the default that pip installs. There were many interface changes and a new query interface added.

So upgrading to 1.4 breaks stuff that depends on the sqlalchemy 1.3 API internals. In your requirements.txt file-- pin the project version to the 1.3.x series until the rest of your stuff catches up. For example, as of this date sqlalchemy-utils is still dependent on sqlalchemy 1.3x.

requirements.txt:

sqlalchemy < 1.4.0

Then use:

pip -r requirements.txt

to "downgrade" to the pinned version.

Answer 2

Go to sqlalchemy_utils.functions file and change :

• from sqlalchemy.orm.query import _ColumnEntity (comment this one, or delete it)
• from sqlalchemy.orm.context import _ColumnEntity (include)

in consequence of this, i belive it should change some stuff along the code...

Answer 3

If you don't want to modify the requirements file, as recommended in @InsertSpywareTrackingHere's answer, you can manually pip install an older version instead:

pip install sqlalchemy==1.3.24

Answer 4

you can temporarily fix this by changing the imports in sqlalchemy_utils\functions\orm.py:

from sqlalchemy.orm.query import _ColumnEntity

to

from sqlalchemy.orm.context import _ColumnEntity