Relative imports with unittest in Python

Question

I am trying to use Python unittest and relative imports, and I can't seem to figure it out. I know there are a lot of related questions, but none of them have helped so far. Sorry if this is repetitive, but I would really appreciate any help. I was trying to use the syntax from PEP 328 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0328/ but I must have something wrong.

My directory structure is:

project/     __init__.py     main_program.py     lib/         __init__.py         lib_a         lib_b     tests/         __init__.py         test_a         test_b 

I run my tests using:

python -m unittest test_module1 test_module2 

test_a needs to import both lib/lib_a and main_program. This is the code from test_a I am trying to use for the import:

from ..lib import lib_a as lib from ...project import main_program 

both raise this error:

ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package 

All of my init.py files are currently empty.

Any specific advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Edit:

This may be the answer: Python Packages? I'm still verifying if this will work.

Edit II:

To clarify, at this point I have attempted to run my test file in 3 different ways:

project/tests $ python -m unittest test_a project/tests $ python -m test_a project/tests $ ./test_a 

All three fail with the same error as above. When I use the same three syntaxes but in the project directory, I get this error:

ValueError: Attempted relative import beyond toplevel package 

Thanks again.

Answer 1

In my experience it is easiest if your project root is not a package, like so:

project/   test.py   run.py   package/     __init__.py     main_program.py     lib/       __init__.py       lib_a       lib_b     tests/       __init__.py       test_a       test_b 

However, as of python 3.2 , the unittest module provides the -t option, which lets you set the top level directory, so you could do (from package/):

python -m unittest discover -t .. 

More details at the unittest docs.

Answer 2

I run with the same problem and kai's answer solved it. I just want to complement his answer with the content of test.py (as @gsanta asked). I've only tested it on Python 2.7:

from packages.tests import test_a, test_b import unittest  # for test_a unittest.main(test_a, exit=False)  # for test_b unittest.main(test_b) 

then you can just

../project $ python test.py