Quick Fix: Python raises the ImportError: No module named 'grpc' when it cannot find the library grpc. The most frequent source of this error is that you haven’t installed grpc explicitly with pip install grpcio. Alternatively, you may have different Python versions on your computer, and grpc is not installed for the particular version you’re using.

In most cases, you actually want to pip install grpcio and not grpc. If you really want to install grpcio, replace all occurrences of pip install grpc (and variants) with pip install grpcio.

Here are some examples that may work depending on your environment:

python -m pip install grpcio

sudo pip install grpcio

pip.exe install grpcio

Also, make sure to install grpcio-tools:

pip install grpcio-tools

Problem Formulation

You’ve just learned about the awesome capabilities of the grpc library and you want to try it out, so you start your code with the following statement:

import grpc

This is supposed to import the gRPC library into your (virtual) environment. However, it only throws the following ImportError: No module named grpc:

>>> import grpc

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#6>", line 1, in <module> import grpc

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'grpc'

By the way, this graphic shows the purpose of gRPC and what it is:

Solution Idea 1: Install Library grpc

The most likely reason is that Python doesn’t provide grpc in its standard library. You need to install it first!

Before being able to import the grpc module, you need to install it using Python’s package manager pip. Make sure pip is installed on your machine.

To fix this error, you can run the following command in your Windows shell:

$ pip install grpc

or

$ pip install grpcio

This simple command installs grpc in your virtual environment on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It assumes that your pip version is updated. If it isn’t, use the following two commands in your terminal, command line, or shell (there’s no harm in doing it anyways):

$ python -m pip install – upgrade pip

$ pip install grpcio

Note: Don’t copy and paste the $ symbol. This is just to illustrate that you run it in your shell/terminal/command line.

Solution Idea 2: Fix the Path

The error might persist even after you have installed the grpc library. This likely happens because pip is installed but doesn’t reside in the path you can use. Although pip may be installed on your system the script is unable to locate it. Therefore, it is unable to install the library using pip in the correct path.

To fix the problem with the path in Windows follow the steps given next.

Step 1: Open the folder where you installed Python by opening the command prompt and typing where python

Step 2: Once you have opened the Python folder, browse and open the Scripts folder and copy its location. Also verify that the folder contains the pip file.

Step 3: Now open the Scripts directory in the command prompt using the cd command and the location that you copied previously.

Step 4: Now install the library using pip install grpcio command. Here’s an analogous example:

After having followed the above steps, execute our script once again. And you should get the desired output.

Other Solution Ideas

• The ModuleNotFoundError may appear due to relative imports. You can learn everything about relative imports and how to create your own module in this article.
• You may have mixed up Python and pip versions on your machine. In this case, to install grpc for Python 3, you may want to try python3 -m pip install grpcio or even pip3 install grpcio instead of pip install grpcio
• If you face this issue server-side, you may want to try the command pip install – user grpcio
• If you’re using Ubuntu, you may want to try this command: sudo apt install grpcio
• You can also check out this article to learn more about possible problems that may lead to an error when importing a library.

Understanding the “import” Statement

import grpc

In Python, the import statement serves two main purposes:

• Search the module by its name, load it, and initialize it.
• Define a name in the local namespace within the scope of the import statement. This local name is then used to reference the accessed module throughout the code.

What’s the Difference Between ImportError and ModuleNotFoundError?

What’s the difference between ImportError and ModuleNotFoundError?

Python defines an error hierarchy, so some error classes inherit from other error classes. In our case, the ModuleNotFoundError is a subclass of the ImportError class.

You can see this in this screenshot from the docs:

You can also check this relationship using the issubclass() built-in function:

>>> issubclass(ModuleNotFoundError, ImportError)

True

Specifically, Python raises the ModuleNotFoundError if the module (e.g., grpc) cannot be found. If it can be found, there may be a problem loading the module or some specific files within the module. In those cases, Python would raise an ImportError.

If an import statement cannot import a module, it raises an ImportError. This may occur because of a faulty installation or an invalid path. In Python 3.6 or newer, this will usually raise a ModuleNotFoundError.

Related Videos

The following video shows you how to resolve the ImportError:

The following video shows you how to import a function from another folder—doing it the wrong way often results in the ModuleNotFoundError:

How to Fix “ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘grpc’” in PyCharm

If you create a new Python project in PyCharm and try to import the grpc library, it’ll raise the following error message:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:/Users/.../main.py", line 1, in <module> import grpc

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'grpc' Process finished with exit code 1

The reason is that each PyCharm project, per default, creates a virtual environment in which you can install custom Python modules. But the virtual environment is initially empty—even if you’ve already installed grpc on your computer!

Here’s a screenshot exemplifying this for the pandas library. It’ll look similar for grpc.

The fix is simple: Use the PyCharm installation tooltips to install Pandas in your virtual environment—two clicks and you’re good to go!

First, right-click on the pandas text in your editor:

Second, click “Show Context Actions” in your context menu. In the new menu that arises, click “Install Pandas” and wait for PyCharm to finish the installation.

The code will run after your installation completes successfully.

As an alternative, you can also open the Terminal tool at the bottom and type:

$ pip install grpcio

If this doesn’t work, you may want to set the Python interpreter to another version using the following tutorial: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/2016.1/configuring-python-interpreter-for-a-project.html

You can also manually install a new library such as grpc in PyCharm using the following procedure:

• Open File > Settings > Project from the PyCharm menu.
• Select your current project.
• Click the Python Interpreter tab within your project tab.
• Click the small + symbol to add a new library to the project.
• Now type in the library to be installed, in your example Pandas, and click Install Package.
• Wait for the installation to terminate and close all popup windows.

Here’s an analogous example:

Here’s a full guide on how to install a library on PyCharm.

• How to Install a Library on PyCharm

Problem Formulation and Solution Overview

This article will show you various ways to work with an XML file.

XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language. This file type is similar to HTML. However, XML does not have pre-defined tags like HTML. Instead, a coder can define their own tags to meet specific requirements. XML is a great way to transmit and share data, either locally or via the internet. This file can be parsed based on standardized XML if structured correctly.

To make it more interesting, we have the following running scenario:

Jan, a Bookstore Owner, wants to know the top three (3) selling Books in her store. This data is currently saved in an XML format.

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Question: How would we write code to read in and extract data from an XML file into a Python script?

We can accomplish this by performing the following steps:

• Method 1: Use xmltodict()
• Method 2: Use minidom.parse()
• Method 3: Use etree
• Method 4: Use untangle.parse()

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Method 1: Use xmltodict()

This method uses the xmltodict() function to read an XML file, convert it to a Dictionary and extract the data.

In the current working directory, create an XML file called books.xml. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it.

<bookstore> <book> <title>Surrender</title> <author>Bono</author> <sales>21987</sales> </book> <book> <title>Going Rogue</title> <author>Janet Evanovich</author> <sales>15986</sales> </book> <book> <title>Triple Cross</title> <author>James Patterson</author> <sales>11311</sales> </book>
</bookstore>

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In the current working directory, create a Python file called books.py. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it. This code reads in and parses the above XML file. If necessary, install the xmltodict library.

import xmltodict with open('books.xml', 'r') as fp: books_dict = xmltodict.parse(fp.read()) fp.close() for i in books_dict: for j in books_dict[i]: for k in books_dict[i][j]: print(f'Title: {k["title"]} \t Sales: {k["sales"]}')

The first line in the above code snippet imports the xmltodict library. This library is needed to access and parse the XML file.

The following highlighted section opens books.xml in read mode (r) and saves it as a File Object, fp. If fp was output to the terminal, an object similar to the one below would display.

<_io.TextIOWrapper name='books.xml' mode='r' encoding='cp1252'>

Next, the xmltodict.parse() function is called and passed one (1) argument, fp.read(), which reads in and parses the contents of the XML file. The results save to books_dict as a Dictionary, and the file is closed. The contents of books_dict are shown below.

{'bookstore': {'book': [{'title': Surrender', 'author': 'Bono', 'sales': '21987'}, {'title': 'Going Rogue', 'author': 'Janet Evanovich', 'sales': '15986'}, {'title': 'Triple Cross', 'author': 'James Patterson', 'sales': '11311'}]}}

The final highlighted section loops through the above Dictionary and extracts each book’s Title and Sales.

Title: Surrender Sales: 21987
Title: Going Rogue Sales: 15986
Title: Triple Cross Sales: 11311

Note: The \t character represents the <Tab> key on the keyboard.

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Method 2: Use minidom.parse()

This method uses the minidom.parse() function to read and parse an XML file. This example extracts the ID, Title and Sales for each book.

This example differs from Method 1 as this XML file contains an additional line at the top (<?xml version="1.0"?>) of the file and each <book> tag now has an id (attribute) assigned to it.

In the current working directory, create an XML file called books2.xml. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<bookstore> <storename>Jan's Best Sellers List</storename> <book id="21237"> <title>Surrender</title> <author>Bono</author> <sales>21987</sales> </book> <book id="21946"> <title>Going Rogue</title> <author>Janet Evanovich</author> <sales>15986</sales> </book> <book id="18241"> <title>Triple Cross</title> <author>James Patterson</author> <sales>11311</sales> </book>
</bookstore>

In the current working directory, create a Python file called books2.py. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it.

from xml.dom import minidom doc = minidom.parse('books2.xml')

name = doc.getElementsByTagName('storename')[0]

books = doc.getElementsByTagName('book') for b in books: bid = b.getAttribute('id') title = b.getElementsByTagName('title')[0] sales = b.getElementsByTagName('sales')[0] print(f'{bid} {title.firstChild.data} {sales.firstChild.data}')

The first line in the above code snippet imports the minidom library. This allows access to various functions to parse the XML file and retrieve tags and attributes.

The first section of highlighted lines performs the following:

• Reads and parse the books2.xml file and saves the results to doc. This action creates the Object shown as (1) below.
• Retrieves the <storename> tag and saves the results to name. This action creates an Object shown as (2) below.
• Retrieves the <book> tag for each book and saves the results to books. This action creates a List of three (3) Objects: one for each book shown as (3) below.

(1) <xml.dom.minidom.Document object at 0x0000022D764AFEE0> (2) <DOM Element: storename at 0x22d764f0ee0> (3) [<DOM Element: book at 0x22d764f3a30>, <DOM Element: book at 0x22d764f3c70>, <DOM Element: book at 0x22d764f3eb0>]

The last section of highlighted lines loop through the books Object and outputs the results to the terminal.

21237 Surrender 21987
21946 Going Rogue 15986
18241 Triple Cross 11311

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Method 3: Use etree

This method uses etree to read in and parses an XML file. This example extracts the Title and Sales data for each book.

The etree considers the XML file as a tree structure. Each element represents a node of said tree. Accessing elements is done on an element level.

This example reads in and parses the books2.xml file created earlier.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET xml_data = ET.parse('books2.xml')

root = xml_data.getroot() for books in root.findall('book'): title = books.find('title').text author = books.find('author').text sales = books.find('sales').text print(title, author, sales)

The first line in the above code snippet imports the etree library. This allows access to all nodes of the XML <tag> structure.

The following line reads in and parses books2.xml. The results save as an XML Object to xml_data. If output to the terminal, an Object similar to the one below displays.

<Element 'bookstore' at 0x000001E45E9442C0>

The following highlighted section uses a for loop to iterate through each <book> tag, extracting the <title>, <author> and <sales> tags for each book and outputting them to the terminal.

Surrender Bono 21987
Going Rogue Janet Evanovich 15986
Triple Cross James Patterson 11311

To retrieve the attribute of the <book> tag, run the following code.

This code extracts the id attribute from each <book> tag and outputs it to the terminal.

{'id': '21237'}
{'id': '21946'}
{'id': '18241'}

To extract the values, run the following code.

for id in root.iter('book'): vals = id.attrib.values() for v in vals: print(vals)

21237
21946
18241

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Method 4: Use untangle.parse()

This method uses untangle.parse() to parse an XML string.

This example reads in and parses the books3.xml file shown below. If necessary, install the untangle library.

The untangle library converts an XML file to a Python object. This is a good option when you have a group of items, such as book names.

In the current working directory, create an XML file called books3.xml. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it. If necessary, install the untangle library.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<root> <book name="Surrender"/> <book name="Going Rogue"/> <book name="Triple Cross"/>

</root>

In the current working directory, create a Python file called books3.py. Copy and paste the code snippet below into this file and save it.

import untangle book_obj = untangle.parse('books3.xml')

books = ','.join([book['name'] for book in book_obj.root.book]) for b in books.split(','): print(b)

The first line in the above code snippet imports the untangle library allowing access to the XML file structure.

The following line reads in and parses the books3.xml file. The results save to book_obj.

The next line calls the join() function and passes it one (1) argument: List Comprehension. This code iterates through and retrieves the name of each book and saves the results to books. If output to the terminal, the following displays:

 Surrender,Going Rogue,Triple Cross

The next line instantiates a for loop, iterates through each book name, and sends it to the terminal.

Surrender
Going Rogue
Triple Cross

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Summary

This article has shown four (4) ways to work with XML files to select the best fit for your coding requirements.

Good Luck & Happy Coding!

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