Unable to import sendgrid into GAE application

Question

I have a GAE application that I want to integrate with Sendgrid. I've followed the instructions (https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/mail/sendgrid) on how to install Sendgrid and everything works fine in my local dev environment.

However, when I push my application to GAE and run it, I immediately receive the following 500 Server Error:

Error: Server Error

The server encountered an error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds.

Even with debug on, that's all I get. But digging into the logs at GAE I can see the source of the problem:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/data/home/runtimes/python27/python27_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/runtime/wsgi.py", line 240, in Handle handler = _config_handle.add_wsgi_middleware(self._LoadHandler()) File "/base/data/home/runtimes/python27/python27_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/runtime/wsgi.py", line 299, in _LoadHandler handler, path, err = LoadObject(self._handler) File "/base/data/home/runtimes/python27/python27_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/runtime/wsgi.py", line 85, in LoadObject obj = ____import____(path[0]) File "/base/data/home/apps/....wsgi_app.py", line 16, in import sendgrid File "/base/data/home/apps/..../sendgrid/____init____.py", line 7, in from .client import SendGridAPIClient File "/base/data/home/apps/..../sendgrid/client.py", line 1, in import python_http_client ImportError: No module named python_http_client

So I went into sendgrid/client.py and commented out the following line of code...

import python_http_client

Once I do that, I can run my app without receiving the 500 Server Error but the test email I tried to send wasn't delivered (although I didn't receive any error messages when trying to initiate it).

It doesn't seem right that I need to comment out a line of the Sendgrid code to make the import work and I can't figure out why others that are running Sendgrid with Python and GAE aren't having the same problem. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

sendgrid does need python_http_client, which Sendgrid itself maintains at https://github.com/sendgrid/python-http-client -- just copy the few files in directory https://github.com/sendgrid/python-http-client/tree/master/python_http_client to a directory named python_http_client, making the latter a sibling of the sendgrid directory. I'm not sure why the online docs don't mention that -- I'll work to get it fixed, but meanwhile I hope this workaround lets you get started.