No attribute error in importing all module vs importing specific functions from module

Question

When i wrote:

import urllib

fhand = urllib.request.urlopen('http://data.pr4e.org/romeo.txt')
for line in fhand:
    print(line.decode().strip())

The above function returns no attribute name 'request' found

but works when importing all the functions needed:

import urllib.request,urllib.parse,urllib.error

fhand = urllib.request.urlopen('http://data.pr4e.org/romeo.txt')
for line in fhand:
    print(line.decode().strip())

Any suggestions ?

I could not reproduce your error. Can you add your error message? — Jones1220, Jan 18 '19 at 08:14
@Jones1220 Traceback (most recent call last): File "urlb.py", line 3, in fhand = urllib.request.urlopen('http://data.pr4e.org/romeo.txt') AttributeError: module 'urllib' has no attribute 'request' — Nitish, Jan 18 '19 at 08:15
Can't reproduce with python 3.6.6, and of course both snippets fail with py2.7 since `urllib.request` was introduced in py3k. Please post a proper MCVE. — bruno desthuilliers, Jan 18 '19 at 09:05
@brunodesthuilliers can you be more specific, i am using python 3.7.2 — Nitish, Jan 18 '19 at 09:58
How could I be "more specific" ? I tried both `import urllib; urllib.request` and `from urllib import request` in Python3, both worked as expected, I tried them both in Python2 and both failed as expected. — bruno desthuilliers, Jan 18 '19 at 10:05
do you have a python file in your foulder structure that is named "urllib.py"? — Jones1220, Jan 18 '19 at 10:22

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 18 '19 at 08:35

From this answer: When you use an import statement it always searches the actual module path (and/or sys.modules); it doesn't make use of module objects in the local namespace that exist because of previous imports.

So if you want to use any object of the urllib, you need to type in the actual objects you want to use:

import urllib.request

You can also do that:

from urllib import request

fhand = request.urlopen('http://data.pr4e.org/romeo.txt')

No attribute error in importing all module vs importing specific functions from module

1 Answers1