Question

For some reason, I am getting an ImproperlyConfigured error on account of custom middleware.

[Wed Nov 07 20:47:07 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158] File does not exist: /home/davidxu/public_html/favicon.ico
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158] mod_wsgi (pid=24114): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/home/davidxu/dev/Penn-Course-Review-api/api/django.wsgi'.
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158]   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py", line 219, in __call__
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158]     self.load_middleware()
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158]   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 47, in load_middleware
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158]     raise exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured('Error importing middleware %s: "%s"' % (mw_module, e))
[Wed Nov 07 20:47:09 2012] [error] [client 158.130.107.158] ImproperlyConfigured: Error importing middleware api.apiconsumer.authenticate: "No module named api.apiconsumer.authenticate"

For reference, here are the relevant parts of the settings.py file:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = ( 
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
    'api.apiconsumer.authenticate.Authenticate',
)

INSTALLED_APPS = ( 
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'api.courses',
    'api.apiconsumer',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'api.static_content',
    'django_extensions', # used for debugging, remove if problematic
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation:
    # 'django.contrib.admindocs',
)

And the django.wsgi file for what its worth. (Note, There is a lot of custom stuff in here.)

import os,sys

PROJECT_PATH = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

sys.path.append(PROJECT_PATH)


from sandbox_config import *

#Uncomment these two lines to use virtualenv
#activate_this = os.path.join(COURSESAPI_APP_ROOT, "ENV/bin/activate_this.py")
#execfile(activate_this, dict(__file__=activate_this))

sys.path.append(DEV_ROOT)
sys.path.append(COURSESAPI_APP_ROOT)

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings'

import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

Unfortunately, at this point I’m not really sure what to try. The error is extremely unhelpful.

• Deleting the line in question caused the next custom middleware to break the program, which makes me think it may be a path issue.
• Google doesn’t seem to have much in the way of help.

Any ideas what the issue may be and what’s worth trying?

Answer 1

Do the following files exist?

api/__init__.py
api/apiconsumer/__init__.py

If not, then api/apiconsumer/authenticate.py won’t be found.

Also, try removing api from the prefix in the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES and INSTALLED_APPS. So, you would have:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...
    'apiconsumer.authenticate.Authenticate',
)

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'courses',
    'apiconsumer',
    'static_content',
    ...
)