I have a simple Python project using scrapy. My file structure looks like this:
top_level_folder
|-scraper
|--spiders
|---help_functions.py
|---<some more files>
|--items.py
|--pipelines.py
|--settings.py
|--<some more files>
help_functions.py has a couple functions defined, like add_to_items_buffer.
In pipelines.py, I'm attempting to do...
from help_functions import add_to_items_buffer
...
class BlahPipeline:
def process_item(self, item, spider):
...
add_to_items_buffer(item)
...
When I try to run this, I get ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'help_functions'. Doing from spiders.help_functions import add_to_items_buffer throws a similar error.
What's going on here? I imagine I'm misunderstanding something fundamental about how Python imports work.
This post explained it for me! It's a matter of relative vs absolute imports depending on where the file you're calling lives.