Using spyder with virtualenv

Question

I am a newbie to Python and wrapping my head around some basic concepts. I come from PHP background. Following is a definition/breakdown of the problem I am facing:

I installed anaconda, which had a whole bunch of libraries and tools installed into my system. This is kind of my "master python environment"

Then I created and loaded a virtualenv. In this virtualenv I loaded a few packages I wanted like pip install simplekml, pip install ipython

Now I fired open spyder and in the iPython console I tried to import simplekml and it gave me an import error. I read about this issue online and it said within spyder I need to point to the python in my virtualenv (using tools > preferences > python interpreter) or I should do a pip install spyder from my virtualenv and use that version.

I tried both. I installed spyder in my virtualenv and then in the iPython console when I import simplekml I get the error:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'simplekml'

If I go to the terminal and open iPython and type the same then it works fine. How can I have that terminal loaded to spyder?

I have been struggling with this for hours so any help you provide is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Building on what @carlos-cordoba said in his comment. If you have anaconda installed I suggest you create an anaconda environment as so:

conda create --name pyflakes spyder simplekml ipython

This will create an environment pyflakes with spyder, simpleklm and ipython installed.

Then you just have to activate the environment with source activate pyflakes or activate pyflakes if you are on windows and run spyder from there.

For more information on anaconda environments, see the documentation.

EDIT: Add virtualenv example.

To user virtualenv this should work:

$ pip install virtualenv
$ cd my_project_folder
$ virtualenv my_project
$ source my_project/bin/activate
$ pip install spyder simpleklm ipython

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