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I have a project where I want to structure the code in layers. The different parts of the program do very different things, and I wish to have a clean upper layer which binds all of the code in sub-directories together.

However, I struggle with importing modules correctly.

Say I have the structure

Project
└──manage.py
   └──part a
      ├──script_a.py
      ├──__init__.py
      └──modules_a
         ├──module_a1.py
         ├──module_a2.py
         ├──module_a3.py
         └──__init__.py
   └──part b
      ├──script_b.py
      ├──__init__.py
      └──modules_b
         ├──module_b1.py
         ├──module_b2.py
         ├──module_b3.py
         └──__init__.py

If I am writing code in script_a.py that depends on something from module_a1.py I use

from modules_a import module_a1

This works, but VS Code is never happy about the importing, always marking the imports with error. Therefore, I am wondering if there is something that I have logically misunderstood, especially since the script_a.py is not in the root folder?

Fredrik Alvsaker
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2 Answers2

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If you are within a package and you want to access a sub package you have to put a . in front of the sub package. So change your import statement from 

from modules_a import module_a1

to

from .modules_a import module_a1

Then the error disappears.

Alex
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  • My bad, it didn't have `.py` originally, I have changed the question now. It gives me import error without the file extension. – Fredrik Alvsaker Jun 27 '19 at 08:37
  • Can you post the exact error/warning code of VSCode? Which liniting tools (pylint, mypy, etc.) do you use? Since it's working I don't suspect that there is any severe issue in the way of importing the module. What you can try though is to set the following in your `modules_a/__init__.py` file: `import .module_a1` and see if that makes the error disappear. – Alex Jun 27 '19 at 08:50
  • BTW: I see that you import a module that is not existing. It should be `from modules_a import module_a1` instead of `from modules_a import module_1a` notice the difference between `module_a1` and `module_1a`. Does this fix your issue? If so I will update my answer – Alex Jun 27 '19 at 08:53
  • Adding `import .module_a1` gave error `invalid syntax (, line 1)pylint(syntax-error)`. I am using pylint, but have tried disabling `"python.jediEnabled": false` in settings.json without the problem going away. The error presented in the code (same line as the import) is `No name 'module_a1' in module 'modules_a''pylint(no-name-in-module)`. – Fredrik Alvsaker Jun 27 '19 at 09:02
  • Sorry, clumsily written question. The names are just dummy names, so there is no difference between `module_1a` and `module_a1`. I will update the question. – Fredrik Alvsaker Jun 27 '19 at 09:03
  • I get an `ImportError` when using `.modules_a`, which says `attempted relative import with no known parent package`. – Fredrik Alvsaker Jun 27 '19 at 09:51
  • Thank you for your time, Alex. I have decided to work around the problem by only running tests from the root folder, as mentioned in my answer. – Fredrik Alvsaker Jun 27 '19 at 11:02
  • Sure, you're welcome! But in regards to your problem: The execution of scripts depends on the path's context in order to resolve relative paths. Maybe the following answer might solve your problem: https://stackoverflow.com/a/49375740/5734066 You might give it a try. But I'm glad you have found a workaround! – Alex Jun 27 '19 at 11:12
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I decided to solve it by adding a testing file in the root folder and only running the script from the testing file, which will have similar functionality to the manage.py that will be my execution script later.

Fredrik Alvsaker
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