Question

I’m getting started with Django. I can’t get the admin to work (it used to work, I’m not sure what update made it break…).

As soon as I register a model in the admin, the website crashes with this error on any URL:

'module' object is not iterable

In the trace it happens to bug on this:

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/sites.py in register
        for model in model_or_iterable: 

admin_class 
<class 'django.contrib.admin.options.ModelAdmin'>
options 
{}
model_or_iterable   
<module 'model.Branch' from '...../farmpower/src/model/Branch.pyc'>
self    
<django.contrib.admin.sites.AdminSite object at 0x1098196d0>

I’ve tried with different models, in that example, with Branch (code in admin.py):

from django.contrib import admin
from models import *

admin.site.register(Branch)

models.py:

import Page, Promotion, Branch, Contact

Branch.py

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class Branch(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField

[…]

class Meta:
    app_label = "model"
    db_table  = "cms_branch"

def __unicode__(self):
    return self.name

Thank you for your help !

Answer 1

There are several things in your code that are not very neat. One of them might lead to the error you’re seeing, though I don’t know which one of ’em is it.

• You use relative imports (from models import ...). It is more robust do do an absolute import like from yourapp.models import ...).

• You use a “star import”: from models import *. You don’t really know what you’re importing exactly in the file where you’re doing this. Also automatic code checkers (like pyflakes) cannot check whether you’re missing imports anymore.

• You mention models.yml as the filename. That’s not a .py extension, so python doesn’t do a thing with that one.

• The app name you set in the Meta on your models is model. Note that “models” and “model” are quite django-internal names. So having an app called “model” with a “models.py” could easily go wrong. Why is the app not yourapp or something like that?

Here are some ways in which it could go wrong:

Star import: perhaps you’ve imported a different admin in models.py? Which overwrites, through the star import, the one in admin.py?

The models.yml: if that really is the name, what does from models import * return? With a non-existing models.py? Try to import Branch explicitly: from models import Branch and see if it fails.

App name: if your app is really called “model”, a relative import from models import * could perhaps get you the top-level “model” module instead of the “model.models” that you mean in case you mis-type something.