Importing matplotlib.pyplot fails in PyCharm due to AttributeError: module 'PyQt5.QtGui' has no attribute 'QApplication'

Question

I wanted to change my python compiler to "newer" one (within one project) and use some additional packages with conda. After the installation all my packages worked fine and I could use the console, however matplotlib.pyplot fails to import since then. And throws the following error: app = QtGui.QApplication([" "]) AttributeError: module 'PyQt5.QtGui' has no attribute 'QApplication'

After doing some research on this I found this one: link It is suggesting to change inputhooks.py (on line 513 and change GUI_QT:enable_qt4 to GUI_QT: enable_qt5 4 to 5) As it is a company machine, I can't have admin rights to overwrite things within PyCharm.

Can you recommend a better solution to avoid this?

Why is this popping up? ErrorLogScreenshot

Also I tried to install the newer version of pyqt but that didn't fix the problem.

In the same time Within pydev the interactiveshell.py fails as well. with the following error message:self.showtraceback(running_compiled_code=True) TypeError: showtraceback() got an unexpected keyword argument 'running_compiled_code' I understand it gets an argument which it is not expecting. I did some research on this one as well and some could fix it by deleting a stale a corresponding .pyc file (I couldn't find one at the same location as the initial file only interactiveshell.py)

Below this blog regarding pydev the conversation never went further https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/10687

Is there a way to fix it? I am kind of new to Python and don't quite understand the heart of it at this depth so any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Anna

Answer 1

For anyone having the same issue, I have solved this problem by switching to qt and pyqt 4. To do so, follow the following procedure:

conda remove qt   
conda install qt=4
conda install -c anaconda pyqt=4.11.4
conda install matplotlib --no-update-dependencies

If you are not using a virtual environment, you might also have to remove anaconda navigator before installing new packages:

conda uninstall anaconda-navigator

At the beginning of your program, switch matplotlib backend:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.switch_backend('Qt4Agg')

Inspired by this solution.