How to fix ImportError: No module named packages.urllib3?

Question

I'm running Python 2.7.6 on an Ubuntu machine. When I run twill-sh (Twill is a browser used for testing websites) in my Terminal, I'm getting the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "dep.py", line 2, in <module>
    import twill.commands
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/twill/__init__.py", line 52, in <module>
    from shell import TwillCommandLoop
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/twill/shell.py", line 9, in <module>
    from twill import commands, parse, __version__
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/twill/commands.py", line 75, in <module>
    browser = TwillBrowser()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/twill/browser.py", line 31, in __init__
    from requests.packages.urllib3 import connectionpool as cpl
ImportError: No module named packages.urllib3

However, I can import urllib in Python console just fine. What could be the reason?

Answer 1

There is a difference between the standard urllib and urllib2 and the third-party urllib3.

It looks like twill does not install the dependencies so you have to do it yourself. Twill depends on requests library which comes with and uses urllib3 behind the scenes. You also need lxml and cssselect libraries.

You can install them on terminal as follows:

pip install requests

pip install lxml

and

pip install cssselect

Answer 2

If you already have 'requests' installed from a default build, you may have to

sudo pip install --upgrade requests

Credit to @bkzland from comment on previous answer:

I followed these steps having the same error, I needed to use sudo pip install --upgrade each time to make it work. – bkzland Dec 17 '15 at 12:57

---now, how do I make this a dependency in my setup.py?

Answer 3

If you are having a RHEL based flavour, then:

yum install -y python-requests

Debian/Ubuntu based flavour:

apt-get install -y python-requests

Arch Linux based flavour:

pacman -S python-requests

Answer 4

Problem solved by:

pip install --upgrade urllib3==1.19.1
pip install --upgrade requests

Answer 5

python3

#note that requests.packages.urllib3 is just an alias for urllib3
from urllib3 import disable_warnings
from urllib3.exceptions import InsecureRequestWarning
disable_warnings(InsecureRequestWarning)

Answer 6

It should be pointed out, you can also get this error if you are making the rookie mistake I did, running a python 3 script with the "old" python command, i.e. run the script as

python3 <script>.py

not

python <script>.py

Answer 7

The problem here is depending on something implicitly by way of a sub-dependency. This style is tantamount to referring to a class's dunder-methods since a dependency's own dependencies may change (e.g say if requests stops using/exposing urllib3).

You can avoid this issue by being explicit with your dependencies, and expressing them (i.e urllib3) as a dependency in your requirements.txt/pyproject.toml file.

Answer 8

This is possible due to requests version that you use, have different version of urlib3 then the one you are using in environment.