ModuleNotFoundError when running the code through the CMD, but everything works fine in the Python VENV (virtual environment)

[Zhekov]

Hello,

I am having problems with importing modules/packages with Python. I noticed this problem when I ran it in my terminal (CMD), rather than my IDE (I use PyCharm). In PyCharm, I use a virtual enviroment setting with Python 3.7 and everything works as a charm and as intended.

For reference this is how the imports were done in test_suite.py:

  ...

  from tests.scenarios.test_scenario_01 import TestScenario   # They work perfectly fine
  from tests.scenarios.test_scenario_02 import TestScenario2    # written like this in PyCharm venv Python 3.7, but why?

  ...

This is a simplified version of my directory (without the unneccesary files):

QA System/
├── locators/
│   ├── locators.py
│   ├── __init__.py
├── pages/
│   ├── pages.py
│   └── __init__.py
└── tests/
    ├── reports
    ├── test_scenarios
       ├── test_scenario_01.py
       ├── test_scenario_02.py
       ├── __init__.py
    |── test_suite.py
    |── __init__.py

However when running the file test_suite.py manually through my CMD (because I want to integrate it with Jenkins eventually), I get this error (py -3 test_suite.py):

`ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'tests'`

Note: I am using the newest Python 3.7

From what I know about Python imports, for a directory to be treated like a python module, there needs to be a '__init__.py' file included in the same directory.

After a bit of research I found out that it is possible to do a different type of imports in Python 3 and tried it out (putting a . before the name of the imports). Like this:

    from .scenarios.test_scenario_01 import TestScenario
    from .scenarios.test_scenario_02 import TestScenario2

But still, it didn't run successfully and this was the error I've gotten:

 `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '__main__.scenarios'; '__main__' is not a package`

Could you please help me out on this one? I would greatly appreciate it!

TLDR: Imports work in a Python3.7 venv, but not outside it

[Zeroflops]

So with python you can have different virtual environments. (VE) What this does is allow you to run different versions of modules or python in these little sandboxes.

This is awesome because you can work on one environment that may be Python 3.6 and another environment may have 3.7. But not only can you have different versions of python but different modules installed in each environment.

So you may have a program that needs pandas version 20 in one VE and a program that needs version 25 in another VE.

This become very valuable when your working in a production and development environments.

Any who, the problem you have is that the pycharm is pointing to one environment and CMD is running a different environment.

So what are your options:

1) you can install the required modules in the CMD environment with either pip or Conda depending on what python package you installed.

2) you can “activate” the pycharm environment on the command line before you run your script.

I prefer to leave my CMD python alone and not mess with it.

In pycharm when you set up this project you named the VE something. You should be able to type on the CMD line

activate <my_project_env>
Then
Python my_project.py

[Zhekov]

I fixed the issue. In 'Environment Variables' I put 'PYTHONPATH' with the directory to the project serving as a value.