Importing installed package from script raises "AttributeError: module has no attribute" or "ImportError: cannot import name"

Question

I have a script named requests.py that imports the requests package. The script either can't access attributes from the package, or can't import them. Why isn't this working and how do I fix it?

The following code raises an AttributeError.

import requests

res = requests.get('http://www.google.ca')
print(res)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/me/dev/rough/requests.py", line 1, in <module>
    import requests
  File "/Users/me/dev/rough/requests.py", line 3, in <module>
    requests.get('http://www.google.ca')
AttributeError: module 'requests' has no attribute 'get'

The following code raises an ImportError.

from requests import get

res = get('http://www.google.ca')
print(res)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "requests.py", line 1, in <module>
    from requests import get
  File "/Users/me/dev/rough/requests.py", line 1, in <module>
    from requests import get
ImportError: cannot import name 'get'

Or code that imports from a module inside the requests package:

from requests.auth import AuthBase

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "requests.py", line 1, in <module>
    from requests.auth import AuthBase
  File "/Users/me/dev/rough/requests.py", line 1, in <module>
    from requests.auth import AuthBase
ImportError: No module named 'requests.auth'; 'requests' is not a package

Answer 1

This happens because your local module named requests.py shadows the installed requests module you are trying to use. The current directory is prepended to sys.path, so the local name takes precedence over the installed name.

An extra debugging tip when this comes up is to look at the Traceback carefully, and realize that the name of your script in question is matching the module you are trying to import:

Notice the name you used in your script:

File "/Users/me/dev/rough/requests.py", line 1, in <module>

The module you are trying to import: requests

Rename your module to something else to avoid the name collision.

Python may generate a requests.pyc file next to your requests.py file (in the __pycache__ directory in Python 3). Remove that as well after your rename, as the interpreter will still reference that file, re-producing the error. However, the pyc file in __pycache__ should not affect your code if the py file has been removed.

In the example, renaming the file to my_requests.py, removing requests.pyc, and running again successfully prints <Response [200]>.

Answer 2

The error occurs because a user-created script has a name-clash with a library filename. Note, however, that the problem can be caused indirectly. It might take a little detective work to figure out which file is causing the problem.

For example: suppose that you have a script mydecimal.py that includes import decimal, intending to use the standard library decimal library for accurate floating-point calculations with decimal numbers. That doesn't cause a problem, because there is no standard library mydecimal. However, it so happens that decimal imports numbers (another standard library module) for internal use, so a script called numbers.py in your project would cause the problem.

If you still encounter problems like this after tracking own and renaming or removing the appropriate .py files in your project, also check for .pyc files that Python uses to cache bytecode compilation when importing modules. In 3.x, these will be stored in folders with the special name __pycache__; it is safe to delete such folders and files, and possible to suppress them (but you normally won't want to).