How to fix “Attempted relative import in non-package” even with __init__.py

Question

I\'m trying to follow PEP 328, with the following directory structure:

pkg/
  __init__.py
  components/
    core.py
    __init__.py
  tests/
    core_test.py         


        

Answer 1

Here's one way which will piss off everyone but work pretty well. In tests run:

ln -s ../components components

Then just import components like you normally would.

Answer 2

If someone is looking for a workaround, I stumbled upon one. Here's a bit of context. I wanted to test out one of the methods I've in a file. When I run it from within

if __name__ == "__main__":

it always complained of the relative imports. I tried to apply the above solutions, but failed to work, since there were many nested files, each with multiple imports.

Here's what I did. I just created a launcher, an external program that would import necessary methods and call them. Though, not a great solution, it works.

Answer 3

You can use from pkg.components.core import GameLoopEvents, for example I use pycharm, the below is my project structure image, I just import from the root package, then it works:

Answer 4

It depends on how you want to launch your script.

If you want to launch your UnitTest from the command line in a classic way, that is:

python tests/core_test.py

Then, since in this case 'components' and 'tests' are siblings folders, you can import the relative module either using the insert or the append method of the sys.path module. Something like:

import sys
from os import path
sys.path.append( path.dirname( path.dirname( path.abspath(__file__) ) ) )
from components.core import GameLoopEvents

Otherwise, you can launch your script with the '-m' argument (note that in this case, we are talking about a package, and thus you must not give the '.py' extension), that is:

python -m pkg.tests.core_test

In such a case, you can simply use the relative import as you were doing:

from ..components.core import GameLoopEvents

You can finally mix the two approaches, so that your script will work no matter how it is called. For example:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if __package__ is None:
        import sys
        from os import path
        sys.path.append( path.dirname( path.dirname( path.abspath(__file__) ) ) )
        from components.core import GameLoopEvents
    else:
        from ..components.core import GameLoopEvents

Answer 5

Because your code contains if __name__ == "__main__", which doesn't be imported as a package, you'd better use sys.path.append() to solve the problem.

Answer 6

In core_test.py, do the following:

import sys
sys.path.append('../components')
from core import GameLoopEvents