Error: Unable to import module 'handler': No module named builtins

[brandonhilkert]

Context

Deploying a new Flask Python 2.7 app (we have another one working well) and getting this error.

Expected Behavior

The error should not be thrown

Actual Behavior

[1510159074562] Unable to import module 'handler': No module named builtins

Your Environment

• Zappa version used: 0.45.1
• Operating System and Python version: OSX w/ python 2.7.14
• The output of pip freeze:

aniso8601==1.3.0
argcomplete==1.9.2
backports.csv==1.0.5
-e git+git@github.com:Bark-us/bark-nlp.git@4dbab62dc5bc154d0caf6344ca70b698644e2338#egg=bark_nlp
base58==0.2.4
boto3==1.4.7
botocore==1.7.41
cachetools==2.0.1
certifi==2017.11.5
cffi==1.11.2
chardet==3.0.4
-e git+git@github.com:Bark-us/classify-text.git@ee3d97d2b29a723f7963c1b3078cee69ad63aaa7#egg=classify_text
click==6.7
cymem==1.31.2
cytoolz==0.8.2
decorator==4.1.2
dill==0.2.7.1
docutils==0.14
durationpy==0.5
emoji==0.4.5
Flask==0.12.2
Flask-RESTful==0.3.6
ftfy==4.4.3
future==0.16.0
futures==3.1.1
fuzzywuzzy==0.15.1
-e git+git@github.com:Bark-us/gglsbl.git@72a02c4c01cf87fd5a9b1fa31c8fd70310b58110#egg=gglsbl
google-api-python-client==1.6.4
hjson==3.0.1
html5lib==0.999999999
httplib2==0.10.3
idna==2.6
ijson==2.3
itsdangerous==0.24
Jinja2==2.9.6
jmespath==0.9.3
joblib==0.10.0
kappa==0.6.0
lambda-packages==0.19.0
marisa-trie==0.7.4
MarkupSafe==1.0
murmurhash==0.26.4
networkx==2.0
newrelic==2.96.0.80
nltk==3.2
numpy==1.13.3
oauth2client==3.0.0
oauthlib==2.0.6
pandas==0.18.1
pathlib==1.0.1
plac==0.9.6
placebo==0.8.1
preshed==1.0.0
pyasn1==0.3.7
pyasn1-modules==0.1.5
pycparser==2.18
pyemd==0.4.4
Pyphen==0.9.4
python-dateutil==2.6.1
python-Levenshtein==0.12.0
python-slugify==1.2.4
pytz==2017.3
PyYAML==3.12
regex==2017.9.23
requests==2.18.4
requests-oauthlib==0.8.0
rsa==3.4.2
s3transfer==0.1.11
scikit-learn==0.18.1
scipy==1.0.0
six==1.11.0
spacy==1.9.0
termcolor==1.1.0
textblob==0.13.0
-e git+git@github.com:Bark-us/textstat.git@f94746d5596c10ab7e46ef78b62b89224d044937#egg=textstat
thinc==6.5.2
toml==0.9.3
toolz==0.8.2
tqdm==4.19.1
troposphere==2.0.2
twython==3.6.0
ujson==1.35
Unidecode==0.4.21
uritemplate==3.0.0
urllib3==1.22
wcwidth==0.1.7
webencodings==0.5.1
Werkzeug==0.12
wrapt==1.10.11
wsgi-request-logger==0.4.6
xgboost==0.6a2
zappa==0.45.1

• Your zappa_settings.py:

{
    "dev": {
        "project_name": "bark-api-classify",
        "app_function": "api.app",
        "aws_region": "us-east-1",
        "profile_name": "default",
        "exclude": ["config", "docs", "scripts"],
        "manage_roles": false,
        "role_name": "bark-api-dev-ZappaLambdaExecutionRole",
        "runtime": "python2.7",
        "slim_handler": true,
        "s3_bucket": "zappa-[redacted]",
        "timeout_seconds": 300,
    }
}

[brandonhilkert]

If I change slim_handler to true in the settings and remove a bunch of dependencies get the package < 50MB, it works as expected. It feels like there's something missing or getting overwritten. Could it be a package thing?

[brandonhilkert]

Recreated the virtual env with the name venv and removed exclusions and all works now.

[brandonhilkert]

FWIW - reverting zappa to version 0.44.3 fixed the issue. The previous comment wasn't enough when using the lastest version.

[GregDubbin]

I've encountered this error (Unable to import module 'handler': No module named builtins) recently and managed to fix it by moving all of the modules in env/lib/dist-packages to env/lib/site-packages. I haven't done any additional testing to figure out why this is a problem for the latest version of zappa but not earlier ones.

[tay-bird]

I've been running into this issue zappa==0.45.1 as well. My workaround is to install zappa into the virtualenv along with any other dependencies.

[bogdanalov]

Guys, why this is still happening?? Degrading it doesn't fix the issue at all

[Shaun1]

Also getting this error in zappa==0.45.1

[Shaun1]

@bogdanalov I had to do pip uninstall zappa on my system pip installation and then pip install zappa in with my virtualenv activated and it was fixed. Seems a little odd though.

[bogdanalov]

@Shaun1 Thanks. I found another issue on Amazon Linux. When installing packages in the virtualenv it is installing them in the dist-packages folder instead of the site-packages one. Move all packages to the site-packages folder and empty the dist-packages one. The thing is you should make this steps everytime when adding new package...

[bogdanalov]

Turning slim_handler to true and uninstalling zappa from the virtualenv somehow works for me.. I have deployed some Lambda functions like this and it is working.

[laudiacay]

I'm currently having this same issue on python3.6/Ubuntu Xenial, and none of the fixes are working. The commands I'm running are as follows, where $django_dir is the directory that has urls.py and stuff in it.

# clear out any old zappa installs from any version of pip
pip uninstall zappa; pip3 uninstall zappa; pip3.6 uninstall zappa
cd $django_dir/..
virtualenv my-env --python=$(which python3.6)
. my-env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt  # to install zappa and django
cd $django_dir
zappa init
zappa update

[vikky1992]

I used pip instead of pip3 and upgraded the zappa module, it worked