ipython install new modules

Question

I am used to the R functionality of installing packages and I am trying to do the same thing with ipython. Sometimes the following method works but then again somet

Answer 1

Here's what I did that made it work; open up iypthon through the command line and type

import sys
sys.path 

This shows a list of folders where other python modules are located. For me this was:

['',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/bin',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas-0.10.0-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/googlemaps-1.0.2-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oauth-1.0.1-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oauth2-1.5.211-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/httplib2-0.7.7-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.28.0-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/jellyfish-0.2.0-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/python_yelp-0.1.1-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo-2.4.2_-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lucene_querybuilder-0.1.6-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mechanize-0.2.5-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/html2text-3.200.3-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python27.zip',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-mac',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
 '/Users/vincentwarmerdam/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL',
 '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/extensions] 

With this information, I now knew where ipython looks for the modules that one can import. So I downloaded the requests library manually, added it to the same root directory such that the following directory exists:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/requests 

This folder contains the python modules that belong to requests. The only thing I now had to do was to make sure that ipython knows that this folder exists. Which was done by updating the sys.path.

req_link = '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/requests'
sys.path.append(req_link) 

After this I no longer got the error.

import requests 

Just works.

Also after restarting ipython, I found that ipython automatically updates the new path into the sys.path list.

Answer 2

I had this same problem when trying to install patool, but it turned out it was due to more than one interpreter installed, and when I ran it from ipython it worked.

Answer 3

actually there is a much much much more elegant solution. when pip is installed then within python you can do things like this as well:

import pip

def install(package):
   pip.main(['install', package])

install('requests') 

which is easier. once logged into a virtualenv you can just make sure that you have what you need in the session you are in. easy.

edit

Another alternative would be to use the %%bash magic.

%%bash
pip install requests

edit2

If you want the standard output, one could even use the exclamation bang.

! pip install requests

Answer 4

If the new packages installed are imported on Terminal but not imported to ipython notebook then it is very likely that you have two versions of python installed on your library. Due to this there are separate site-packages directory from where packages are being imported on terminal and ipython notebook. To check if this is the case. On terminal use:

import sys
sys.path

This will show where the python modules are located for python you using on terminal. Now, in ipython notebook use:

import sys
sys.path

This will show where the python modules are located for python you using on terminal.

Now, if the two path are different you know you are using two different installations of python. To solve this problem, copy installed packages from site-packages directory of terminal python to site-packages directory of ipython.