How to access module from subdirectory in Python

Question

I have a folder structure like so:

/mylib/
/mylib/__init__.py
/mylib/my_class.py
/mylib/tests/test_my_lib.py

In my test, I have:

from mylib import MyClass
import unittest

I'm getting:

 File "test_edgecast_mcc_client.py", line 1, in <module>
 from mylib import MyClass
ImportError: No module named mylib

Which, I think, makes sense because the import would be looking inside the tests directory for mylib when it should be looking in ../mylib?

Can anyone share some light on how to get the import to work properly?

• BrenBarn: Is mylib on your Python module search path?

Answer 1

I believe your tests package needs an __init__.py file too

Answer 2

Add primary directory to $PYTHONPATH. You can do it from your test_my_lib.py using something like this:

import sys
import os.path
d = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
sys.path.insert(0, d)

Answer 3

try using this from command line and see if that eliminates the error

export PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/mylib/"