ImportError: No module named... in __init__.py file

Question

My project structure is:

/home/giri/couponmonk_project
    __init__.py
    views.py

__init__.py

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
app.debug = True
import couponmonk_project.views

views.py

from couponmonk_project import app

@app.route('/', methods = ['GET'])
def index():
    return 'Flask is running!'

When I run:

gunicorn __init__:app -b localhost:8000

from the folder /home/giri/couponmonk_project

I get the error:

ImportError: No module named couponmonk_project.views

I tried adding:

import sys
sys.path.append("/home/giri/couponmonk_project")

to my __init__.py file but still get the same error.

Even if this had worked, is appending to sys.path the proper way of doing this?

I have read that appending to sys and PYTHONPATH may not be the best way to fix the issue.

Answer 1

As it has been stated in the above comments you have a circular dependency. To avoid it, you should make your current couponmonk_project as module, that will be run by another python script. According to the Flask documentation your project should look like:

/home/giri/couponmonk_project
    __init__.py
    /home/giri/couponmonk_project/couponmonk_project
    __init__.py
    views.py

where inner folder couponmonk_project is your present project, and outer folder couponmonk_project is the new one. Thus, file /home/giri/couponmonk_project/__init__.py should be something like:

from couponmonk_project import app
import couponmonk_project.views

app.run()

and your file /home/giri/couponmonk_project/coupon_monk/project__init__.py is:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
app.debug = True