Werkzeug AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'InteractiveInterpreter'

Using Flask (0.8) and Werkzeug (0.8.1) when attempting to run code with app.run(debug=True) I get the below described error. There are no errors when using app.run()

The error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "code2.py", line 9, in <module>
    app.run(debug=True)
File "/<snip>/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Flask-0.8-py2.7.egg/flask/app.py", line 703, in run
    run_simple(host, port, self, **options)
File "/<snip>/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Werkzeug-0.8.1-py2.7.egg/werkzeug/serving.py", line 587, in run_simple
    from werkzeug.debug import DebuggedApplication
File "/<snip>/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Werkzeug-0.8.1-py2.7.egg/werkzeug/debug/__init__.py", line 14, in <module>
    from werkzeug.debug.tbtools import get_current_traceback, render_console_html
File "/<snip>/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Werkzeug-0.8.1-py2.7.egg/werkzeug/debug/tbtools.py", line 19, in <module>
    from werkzeug.debug.console import Console
File "/<snip>/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Werkzeug-0.8.1-py2.7.egg/werkzeug/debug/console.py", line 144, in <module>
    class _InteractiveConsole(code.InteractiveInterpreter):
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'InteractiveInterpreter'

The code (code.py)

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/news/')
def news():
    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

Steps taken to recreate the error

$ cd <project directory>
$ . env/bin/activate # Activates virtuanlenv environment (see below for packages)
$ python code.py

Contents of my env/lib/python2.7/site-packages (versions of various library used) via virtualenv

Flask-0.8-py2.7.egg
Jinja2-2.6-py2.7.egg
pip-1.0.2-py2.7.egg
setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
Werkzeug-0.8.1-py2.7.egg

Things I have tried to solve this problem so far, that have not helped (unfortunately)

Extensive googling/SO searching
Heavy simplification of my code
Deleting created virtualenv and all libraries and reinstallation via easy_install

The strange thing here is that last night, this code worked fine. This morning, without changing anything (that I'm aware of) the code failed to properly run.

Thanks very much for your help!

Solution

The problem is that you have named your module code.py. code is a built in Python module that werkzeug uses (https://docs.python.org/3/library/code.html).

To fix the problem, rename your code.py to something else, and make sure you delete the code.pyc file.

2024 / Python 3.13 update

Python 3.13 (planned release October 2024) will have improved error messages for this situation (see https://docs.python.org/3.13/whatsnew/3.13.html#improved-error-messages):

A common mistake is to write a script with the same name as a standard library module. When this results in errors, we now display a more helpful error message