Python3 error “ImportError: No module named” have __init__.py

Question

I created a simple flask application and my directory structure looks like this:

myproject
- src
-- models
--- __init__.py
-- views
--- errors.py
--- default.py
-- application.py
-- config.py
-- __init__.py
- test
-- test_myproject.py
Readme.md
setup.py
..

The application.py from the src look like this:

from src.models import db
from src.views.errors import error_pages
from src.views.scoreboard import scoreboard
from src.config import config

The test_myproject looks like this:

from src.models import db, Result
from src.application import create_app

I use Pycharm to develop this and when I click run it works but when I try to run it via the command line python application.py I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "src/application.py", line 18, in <module>
    from src.models import db
ImportError: No module named 'src'

Runnint the unittests with python -m unittest works.

If I change the imports from application.py to:

from models import db
from views.errors import error_pages
from views.scoreboard import scoreboard
from config import config

It will work when I run it via the command line, however the tests won't work anymore.

File ".../src/application.py", line 18, in <module>
    from models import db
ImportError: No module named 'models'

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You said that you're running python application.py, which suggests that your working directory is src. To be able to import modules under src.* (without playing with PYTHONPATH) you should run Python from the myproject directory instead.

Consider either moving application.py to myproject or running it with python src/application.py.