unable to load json library while installing twitter api module

Question

im trying to work with the twitter api with python3.3 in windows

while I try to install using

python setup.py install

I get this error:

raise ImportError, "Unable to load a json library"

to solve this i install the simple json module manually

the error comes back again

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\schatterjee\workspace\test\test.py", line 1, in <module>
    import twitter
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\twitter.py", line 50
    raise ImportError, "Unable to load a json library"
                 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

why is this persisting?

Answer 1

Okay, the traceback did help a lot. The problem is not, as originally assumed, that there is no JSON library. Instead you get a syntax error on the line that would throw an error (it doesn’t throw it though!).

The reason you get the syntax error is because the displayed syntax is Python 2 syntax:

raise ExceptionType, "message"

This syntax is no longer a valid syntax in Python 3 but must be written as

raise ExceptionType(message)

The error supports my assumption that the Twitter library you picked is not compatible with Python 3. There are in fact multiple things within the library that would throw further syntax errors. I’m surprised that they didn’t add a check to the setup.py to inform you about this though.

So, unfortunately, you will not be able to use this library with Python 3, but need to use Python 2. You can install both Python 2 and Python 3 in parallel on your computer, if you want to.

You could however also look for a different library. Here are two that are compatible with Python 3; I haven’t tried either of them though:

• Python Twitter Tools (GitHub)
• Wyvern