ipython install new modules

Question

I am used to the R functionality of installing packages and I am trying to do the same thing with ipython. Sometimes the following method works but then again sometimes it doesn't and I would like to finally find out why it only works half the time.

Normally to install a module (like the requests module for example) I would type the following after opening a fresh terminal:

$ sudo pip install requests
Password: *******

This would then be followed by a message indicating that the install was successful or that it has already been installed.

Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): 
requests in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Cleaning up...

Which suggests that the code can be accessed. And indeed if I run python now from the terminal it shows a good response without any errors whatsoever.

$ python
ActivePython 2.7.2.5 (ActiveState Software Inc.) based on
Python 2.7.2 (default, Jun 24 2011, 12:20:15) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5664)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import requests
>>>

I now open PyLab through Alfred and it gives me an error.

Welcome to pylab, a matplotlib-based Python environment [backend: WXAgg].
For more information, type 'help(pylab)'.

In [1]: import requests
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
/Users/vincentwarmerdam/<ipython-input-1-686486c241c8> in <module>()
----> 1 import requests

ImportError: No module named requests

I've read some help from another question on StackOverflow (here) which suggests that I install the module from ipython shell. This gives an even more baffling response:

In [2]: !pip install requests
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): requests in     
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Cleaning up...

In [3]: import requests
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
/Users/vincentwarmerdam/<ipython-input-3-686486c241c8> in <module>()
----> 1 import requests

ImportError: No module named requests

This seems very strange to me. Are there multiple versions of python installed on the system? How could I check this? Do I need to point ipython to the location of the installed code?

I don't know what Alfred is, but what happens if you just try to import requests in an ipython session without pylab/alfred? — reptilicus, Apr 12 '13 at 15:23
Alfred is a shortcut app. I tried running ipython instead of pylab. I get the following: ```$ ipython``` ```In [1]: import request``` ```ImportError: No module named request``` Seems like the same error. — cantdutchthis, Apr 12 '13 at 15:31
try to `import sys ; print sys.path` in iPython to see if the install directory is included. — reptilicus, Apr 12 '13 at 18:16
one thing to check is the value of `sys.executable` when you are in plain Python and IPython, or alternately the value of `head -n 1 $(which ipython)` and `head -n 1 $(which pip)` to make sure they are using the same Python. — minrk, Apr 12 '13 at 23:30
```$ head -n 1 $(which ipython) ``` gives ```#!/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python ``` and ```$ head -n 1 $(which pip)``` gives ```#!/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7 ``` so i need to include the 'pip-folder' to the 'ipython-folder' if i understand correctly? i still don't understand why ```pip install requests``` in ipython tells me that the library is installed while the folders are not correct. — cantdutchthis, Apr 13 '13 at 14:45

cantdutchthis · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-19T07:17:00.553

36

actually there is a much much much more elegant solution. when pip is installed then within python you can do things like this as well:

import pip

def install(package):
   pip.main(['install', package])

install('requests')

which is easier. once logged into a virtualenv you can just make sure that you have what you need in the session you are in. easy.

edit

Another alternative would be to use the %%bash magic.

%%bash
pip install requests

edit2

If you want the standard output, one could even use the exclamation bang.

! pip install requests

edited Apr 19 '16 at 07:17

answered Aug 05 '13 at 10:20

cantdutchthis

24,764
14
64
105

not to my knowledge. but you can install pip easily from easy_install and maybe you should: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3220404/why-use-pip-over-easy-install – cantdutchthis Jul 17 '14 at 08:19
I get permission denied for the first approach, is it possible to somehow have that run as sudo? – Lennart Rolland Aug 02 '17 at 12:55
be careful. you can run `sudo jupyter notebook` followed by these commands but this will cause *EVERY* command to run with `sudo` priviledges which can be a huge security risk. – cantdutchthis Aug 02 '17 at 13:01
if you can ensure that you're in the correct environment from the command line you can also use `sudo pip install ` which is much safer. you just have to ensure that you've got the correct python environment. – cantdutchthis Aug 02 '17 at 13:03

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered May 02 '13 at 15:40

Here's what I did that made it work; open up iypthon through the command line and type

import sys
sys.path

This shows a list of folders where other python modules are located. For me this was:

['',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/bin',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas-0.10.0-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/googlemaps-1.0.2-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oauth-1.0.1-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/oauth2-1.5.211-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/httplib2-0.7.7-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium-2.28.0-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/jellyfish-0.2.0-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/python_yelp-0.1.1-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pymongo-2.4.2_-py2.7-macosx-10.5-i386.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lucene_querybuilder-0.1.6-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mechanize-0.2.5-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/html2text-3.200.3-py2.7.egg',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python27.zip',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-mac',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
 '/Users/vincentwarmerdam/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL',
 '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages',
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/extensions]

With this information, I now knew where ipython looks for the modules that one can import. So I downloaded the requests library manually, added it to the same root directory such that the following directory exists:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/requests

This folder contains the python modules that belong to requests. The only thing I now had to do was to make sure that ipython knows that this folder exists. Which was done by updating the sys.path.

req_link = '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/7.3/lib/python2.7/requests'
sys.path.append(req_link)

After this I no longer got the error.

import requests

Just works.

Also after restarting ipython, I found that ipython automatically updates the new path into the sys.path list.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 18 '17 at 14:53

If the new packages installed are imported on Terminal but not imported to ipython notebook then it is very likely that you have two versions of python installed on your library. Due to this there are separate site-packages directory from where packages are being imported on terminal and ipython notebook. To check if this is the case. On terminal use:

import sys
sys.path

This will show where the python modules are located for python you using on terminal. Now, in ipython notebook use:

import sys
sys.path

This will show where the python modules are located for python you using on terminal.

Now, if the two path are different you know you are using two different installations of python. To solve this problem, copy installed packages from site-packages directory of terminal python to site-packages directory of ipython.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '18 at 00:22

0

I had this same problem when trying to install patool, but it turned out it was due to more than one interpreter installed, and when I ran it from ipython it worked.

answered Mar 18 '18 at 00:22

Sinux1

63
2
11

ipython install new modules

4 Answers4

edit

edit2

Linked