how to fix "import keras not working" error

Question

I have used Keras remotely, such as on Colab and AWS. Today, I tried to install Keras on my laptop using pip3 install keras, and the message was that keras was already installed on the computer (I must have installed it before):

WARNING: pip is being invoked by an old script wrapper. This will fail in a future version of pip.
Please see https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5599 for advice on fixing the underlying issue.
To avoid this problem you can invoke Python with '-m pip' instead of running pip directly.
Requirement already satisfied: keras in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/Keras-2.4.3-py3.7.egg (2.4.3)
Requirement already satisfied: h5py in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/h5py-2.10.0-py3.7-macosx-10.15-x86_64.egg (from keras) (2.10.0)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.9.1 in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from keras) (1.16.4)
Requirement already satisfied: pyyaml in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/PyYAML-5.3.1-py3.7-macosx-10.15-x86_64.egg (from keras) (5.3.1)
Requirement already satisfied: scipy>=0.14 in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from keras) (1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: six in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (from h5py->keras) (1.12.0)

However, when I tried to import keras, I received this message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 3267, in run_code
    exec(code_obj, self.user_global_ns, self.user_ns)
  File "<ipython-input-21-88d96843a926>", line 1, in <module>
    import keras
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'keras'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 2018, in showtraceback
    stb = value._render_traceback_()
AttributeError: 'ModuleNotFoundError' object has no attribute '_render_traceback_'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/core/ultratb.py", line 1095, in get_records
    return _fixed_getinnerframes(etb, number_of_lines_of_context, tb_offset)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/core/ultratb.py", line 313, in wrapped
    return f(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IPython/core/ultratb.py", line 347, in _fixed_getinnerframes
    records = fix_frame_records_filenames(inspect.getinnerframes(etb, context))
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/inspect.py", line 1502, in getinnerframes
    frameinfo = (tb.tb_frame,) + getframeinfo(tb, context)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/inspect.py", line 1460, in getframeinfo
    filename = getsourcefile(frame) or getfile(frame)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/inspect.py", line 696, in getsourcefile
    if getattr(getmodule(object, filename), '__loader__', None) is not None:
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/inspect.py", line 733, in getmodule
    if ismodule(module) and hasattr(module, '__file__'):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/tensorflow/__init__.py", line 50, in __getattr__
    module = self._load()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/tensorflow/__init__.py", line 44, in _load
    module = _importlib.import_module(self.__name__)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 953, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 728, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/tensorflow_core/__init__.py", line 32, in <module>
    from tensorflow._api.v1 import app
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/tensorflow_core/_api/v1/app/__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from tensorflow.python.platform.app import run
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/tensorflow_core/python/platform/app.py", line 23, in <module>
    from absl.app import run as _run
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'absl'

I Googled to find similar problems and I found some suggestions to try sudo pip3 install keras. Keras was downloaded again. However, when I typed import keras, it still produced errors.

Also, I read this Stack Overflow question: How to fix import keras error with python console, but the solution does not work for me as I am calling a library which calls import keras, so I need the import keras command to work (I can't make it call import tensorflow.keras).

Why is this error happening?

Note: I am using Python 3.7.5. I checked the version of pip through pip --version, getting this message:

WARNING: pip is being invoked by an old script wrapper. This will fail in a future version of pip.
Please see https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5599 for advice on fixing the underlying issue.
To avoid this problem you can invoke Python with '-m pip' instead of running pip directly.
pip 20.0.2 from /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)

Also, I am running this code in Jupyter Notebook. I have checked that Python 3.7 is being run by Jupyter Notebook.

Answer 1

Try installing tensorflow first:

pip install tensorflow

Then access keras via tensorflow

from tensorflow.keras.models import Sequential
from tensorflow.keras.layers import Dense
import tensorflow as tf

Answer 2

Make sure you're running your script with python3. Macs and some other computers come with Python 2.7 installed as the default for python, which will bamboozle you daily.

If that doesn't work, set up a virtual environment: Using Python 3 in virtualenv