ImportError: No module named moves

Question

Versions

• Python : 2.7.14
• six : 1.9.0 & 1.11.0(tried on both)
• OS : mac(10.13.3) & ubuntu(16.04) [tried on both]

Error

from six.moves import http_client
ImportError: No module named moves

Description

In flask application which is running on google app engine while running it on local system using dev_appserver.py getting above error while importing from six.moves import http_client

What I have tried

After importing six have tried dir(six) which shows that moves is there in list but it's not able to import it which is very strange.

Output of six.__version__: 1.11.0

Output if dir(six)

['/opt/tribes-backend', '/opt/tribes-backend/lib1', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine', '/usr/lib/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/ssl-2.7.11', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/grpcio-1.0.0', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/six-1.9.0', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/protobuf-3.0.0', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/enum-0.9.23', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/futures-3.0.5', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/setuptools-36.6.0', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/protorpc-1.0', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/pytz-2017.2', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/webapp2-2.3', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/webob-1.1.1', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/werkzeug-0.11.10', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/yaml-3.10', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/enum', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/lib/concurrent/concurrent', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/concurrent', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/google', '/usr/lib/google-cloud-sdk/platform/google_appengine/google'] ['BytesIO', 'Iterator', 'MAXSIZE', 'Module_six_moves_urllib', 'Module_six_moves_urllib_error', 'Module_six_moves_urllib_parse', 'Module_six_moves_urllib_request', 'Module_six_moves_urllib_response', 'Module_six_moves_urllib_robotparser', 'MovedAttribute', 'MovedModule', 'PY2', 'PY3', 'StringIO', '_LazyDescr', '_LazyModule', '_MovedItems', '_SixMetaPathImporter', 'author', 'builtins', 'doc', 'file', 'name', 'package', 'path', 'version', '_add_doc', '_assertCountEqual', '_assertRaisesRegex', '_assertRegex', '_func_closure', '_func_code', '_func_defaults', '_func_globals', '_import_module', '_importer', '_meth_func', '_meth_self', '_moved_attributes', '_print', '_urllib_error_moved_attributes', '_urllib_parse_moved_attributes', '_urllib_request_moved_attributes', '_urllib_response_moved_attributes', '_urllib_robotparser_moved_attributes', 'absolute_import', 'add_metaclass', 'add_move', 'advance_iterator', 'assertCountEqual', 'assertRaisesRegex', 'assertRegex', 'b', 'binary_type', 'byte2int', 'callable', 'class_types', 'create_bound_method', 'exec_', 'functools', 'get_function_closure', 'get_function_code', 'get_function_defaults', 'get_function_globals', 'get_method_function', 'get_method_self', 'get_unbound_function', 'indexbytes', 'int2byte', 'integer_types', 'iterbytes', 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'iterlists', 'itertools', 'itervalues', 'moves', 'next', 'operator', 'print_', 'python_2_unicode_compatible', 'raise_from', 'remove_move', 'reraise', 'string_types', 'sys', 'text_type', 'types', 'u', 'unichr', 'viewitems', 'viewkeys', 'viewvalues', 'with_metaclass', 'wraps'].

As it can be seen from above output moves inside six still giving error while importing it.

Spent a lot of time on this and no solution till now any help would be greatly appreciated here. :(

UPDATE1

Error stacktrace :-

 from google.cloud.datastore import helpers
 File "/opt/tribes-backend/denv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/google/cloud/datastore/helpers.py", line 27, in <module>
 from google.cloud._helpers import _datetime_to_pb_timestamp
 File "/opt/tribes-backend/denv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/google/cloud/_helpers.py", line 30, in <module>
 from six.moves import http_client
 ImportError: No module named moves

Answer 1

For me the issue was resolved by following it on https://github.com/googleapis/python-ndb/issues/249

andrewsg commented 11 days ago:

I think we've identified an issue with devappserver related to the six library specifically. Could you please try a workaround? Add the line: import six; reload(six) to the top of your app, before NDB is loaded and let me know if that works.

Answer 2

Based on follow up with google support team have figured out that communicating with datastore using google-cloud-datastore is deprecated instead using ndb for communicating datastore is the way to go.

Updated documentation stating deprecation using client datastore library is documented here

Documentation to getting started with ndb client library in python is documented here

Answer 3

In some cases if you want to use some python pure libraries, like six, available in your applications you will need to use third-party libraries. Follow the instructions here, to add a third-party library, until the command pip install -t lib -r requirements.txt. In your requirements.txt file just add six==1.11.0. It solved the problem for me.