Question

Setup OSX 10.7.4 Eclipse Indigo, Pydev, Tweepy-1.9

I thought this should be relatively simple but I keep getting an error. I am looking to specify the Tweepy API using sys.path.append( ) However PyDev keeps showing me an “Unresolved import: tweepy” Error

My Code

import sys
sys.path.append('/Applications/tweepy-1.9')
import tweepy

There are several similar posts on this which I have looked at but they seem to give conflicting advice as to whether to link to the top level file or to a particular file within the directory.

My question is should I be linking directly to the top level folder as I am now (/Applications/tweepy-1.9) or to a particular file within this folder? Machaku provided me with some information on a related question saying I could do both but I would have to create a file named “init.py” and link to it.

I have tried both but neither seems to work.

Any suggestions as always are much appriciated

---

The Error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/brendan/Documents/workspace/Tweeter/src/rate_limit.py", line 13, in <module>
    print api.rate_limit_status()
  File "build/bdist.macosx-10.5-fat3/egg/tweepy/binder.py", line 185, in _call
    return method.execute()
  File "build/bdist.macosx-10.5-fat3/egg/tweepy/binder.py", line 149, in execute
    raise TweepError('Failed to send request: %s' % e)
tweepy.error.TweepError: Failed to send request: [Errno 61] Connection refused

---

tweepy-1.9 file structure

• tweepy-1.9

  • build

    • bdist.macosx-10.5-fat3
    • lib
      • tweepy
        • init.py (with 2 underscores either side of ” init “)
        • api.py
        • auth.py
        • binder.py
        • cache.py
        • cursor.py
        • error.py
        • models.py
        • oauth.py
        • parsers.py
        • streaming.py
        • utils.py

  • dist

    • tweepy-1.9-py2.7.egg
  • PKG-INFO
  • README
  • setup.cfg
  • tweepy
    • init.py (with 2 underscores either side of ” init “)
    • api.py
    • auth.py
    • binder.py
    • cache.py
    • cursor.py
    • error.py
    • models.py
    • oauth.py
    • parsers.py
    • streaming.py
    • utils.py
  • tweepy.egg-info
    • dependency_links.txt
    • PKG-INFO
    • SOURCES.txt
    • top_level.txt
    • zip_safe

Answer 1

Given the stack trace, your Tweepy library is found, so your sys.path.append has worked. However, if you read the last line,

tweepy.error.TweepError: Failed to send request: [Errno 61] Connection refused

the error seems to be that the library cannot connect to the twitter service.

Concerning what to put in sys.path, it should be the folder that contains the directory where your top level package lives. So for example, if I have the following structure

src
 | my_package
 |     | __init__.py
 |     | module_1.py
 |     | module_2.py

and I want to be able to do from my_package import module_1 then sys.path must contain the absolute path to src. Also, the __init__.py file must be present to make my_package a Python package.

However, dynamically updating sys.path is definitely not the recommended way to make python packages and modules accessible from another Python program.

There are much better solutions:

• calling python setup.py install, as recommended in the Tweepy install guide (preferably using a virtualenv)

• updating PYTHONPATH to include the root path to the Tweety library.

• using .pth files that are read by the site module

You can find more details in the Python doc on Installing Python Modules and in particular the Modifying Python’s search path section