Relative import django models in views

Question

May someone please give me complete explanation about how this works:

While models.py and views.py are on the same directory on a django app, why should we use relative import:

app1:
  models.py
    # my models was defined here

  views.py
    from .models import *      # this works
    from app1.models import *  # this also works
    from models import *       # ---this one does not work ---

The same will happend with admin.py

If I import

  from .models import *

Then

python manage.py check

Everything is ok but with

from models import *



python manage.py check

ImportError: No module named 'models'

I'm using now python 3.4.x and I had not this problem with 2.7.x

Becuase the execution of the django application is a folder above app1. — James Mertz, Oct 19 '15 at 15:44
Executing file is manage.py, so please explain where is goes and how it works? — Serjik, Oct 19 '15 at 16:02
So with .models python should found the models module in execution file parent directory? So how it will be found in app directory? — Serjik, Oct 19 '15 at 16:26

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

1

It would help to know what version of Python you're using, but I would guess it's Python 3. To quote PEP 8:

Implicit relative imports should never be used and have been removed in Python 3.

I would recommend reading through the section of PEP 8 on imports, here: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#imports

And if you want to read more about the topic, I would suggest PEP 328, which goes into far more detail about the rationale for absolute vs relative imports.

Here is an other link with a more clear description on python 3 relative imports:

Changes in import statement python3

edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

Community

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answered Oct 19 '15 at 16:26

Joey Wilhelm

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I found the best answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12172791/changes-in-import-statement-python3 – Serjik Oct 19 '15 at 17:39

Relative import django models in views

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