attempted relative import beyond top-level package whilst trying to run unit test

Question

This is the folder structure of my python project:

src->
    stock_alerter->
                 tests

Inside the folders stock_alerter and tests I have an empty __init__.py

Inside stock_alerter I have a file stock.py containing:

class Stock:
    def __init__(self, symbol):
        self.symbol = symbol
        self.price = None

Inside tests I have a file test_stock.py containing:

import unittest
from ..stock import Stock

class StockTest(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_price_of_a_new_stock_class_should_be_None(self):
        stock = Stock("GOOG")
        self.assertIsNone(stock.price)

When I run test_stock.py I get:

ValueError('attempted relative import beyond top-level package')

I did some searches but changing

from ..stock import Stock

to:

stock import Stock

gives:

ModuleNotFoundError("No module named 'stock'")

Any ideas? Btw, I use Visual Studio Express 2017 and ran test_stock.py.

PS:

Adding:

import os,sys,inspect
currentdir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(inspect.getfile(inspect.currentframe())))
parentdir = os.path.dirname(currentdir)
sys.path.insert(0,parentdir)

to test_stock.py works. Now I thought Python is easy. What a nightmare ...

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 01 '18 at 16:52

My approach is to avoid writing scripts that have to import from the parent directory. In cases where this must happen, the preferred workaround is to modify sys.path.

but there are other hacking way to it look at this link : Sibling package imports

attempted relative import beyond top-level package whilst trying to run unit test

1 Answers1