ImportError: cannot import name Session, when using Azure SDK

Question

I am running code using Azure SDK.

First, I download the sdk by pip install azure. Then I write to run the following python code.

import requests
import os

# make sure you configure these three variables correctly before you try to run the code 
AZURE_ENDPOINT_URL='https://login.microsoftonline.com/xxxxxx-xx-155715822801/oauth2/token'
AZURE_APP_ID='6dxxxxx8-c4af-4522xxx6-5a8f8155a616'
AZURE_APP_SECRET='password'

def get_token_from_client_credentials(endpoint, client_id, client_secret):
    payload = {
        'grant_type': 'client_credentials',
        'client_id': client_id,
        'client_secret': client_secret,
        'resource': 'https://management.core.windows.net/',
    }
    response = requests.post(endpoint, data=payload).json()
    return response['access_token']

# test
if __name__ == '__main__':
    auth_token = get_token_from_client_credentials(endpoint=AZURE_ENDPOINT_URL,
            client_id=AZURE_APP_ID,
            client_secret=AZURE_APP_SECRET)

    print auth_token

After running the code, I got the message as follows.

  File "D:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\__init__.py", line 58, in <module>
    from . import utils
  File "D:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\utils.py", line 26, in <module>
    from .compat import parse_http_list as _parse_list_header
  File "D:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\compat.py", line 39, in <module>
    import cookielib
  File "D:\Python27\lib\cookielib.py", line 32, in <module>
    import re, urlparse, copy, time, urllib
  File "C:\Users\yulei\Desktop\copy.py", line 8, in <module>
    import azure.mgmt.compute
  File "D:\Python27\lib\site-packages\azure\mgmt\compute\__init__.py", line 19, in <module>
    from .computemanagement import *
  File "D:\Python27\lib\site-packages\azure\mgmt\compute\computemanagement.py", line 23, in <module>
    from requests import Session, Request
ImportError: cannot import name Session

Answer 1

It seems that the issue was caused by the package requests as the same name as the python file or directory includes file __init__.py at the current directory.

Because Python imports packages in order from the paths sys.path, and the first path is '' (current directory).

So if you create a python file requests.py or create a dir requests include a file __init__.py, Python firstly imports it as the package requests. Then, running the code from requests import Session will cause the error ImportError: cannot import name Session.

Please check the current directory or dirs in the paths sys.path in order and remove the file named requests.py or the dir named requests.

Answer 2

I had recently upgraded my requests library using sudo (sudo pip install --upgrade requests), and then I was surprised that I couldn't just call the code without sudo.

It couldn't locate the files it just upgraded due to a permissions issue!