Borislav Hadzhiev
Wed Apr 20 2022·2 min read
Photo by Barry
The Python "AttributeError module 'csv' has no attribute 'writer'" occurs when
we have a local file named csv.py
and try to import from the csv
module. To
solve the error, make sure to rename any local files named csv.py
.
Here is an example of how the error occurs in a file called csv.py
.
import csv with open('example.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile: # ⛔️ AttributeError: module 'csv' has no attribute 'writer' csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=',', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL) csv_writer.writerow(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl'])
The most likely cause of the error is having a local file named csv.py
which
shadows the csv
module from the standard library.
Make sure to rename your local file to something other than csv.py
to solve
the error.
import csv with open('example.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile: # ✅ Works csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=',', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL) csv_writer.writerow(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl'])
You can access the __file__
property on the imported module to see whether it
is shadowed by a local file.
import csv print(csv.__file__) # ⛔️ result if shadowed by local file # /home/borislav/Desktop/bobbyhadz_python/csv.py # ✅ result if pulling in correct module # /usr/lib/python3.10/csv.py
A good way to start debugging is to print(dir(your_module))
and see what
attributes the imported module has.
Here is what printing the attributes of the csv
module looks like when I have
a file csv.py
in the same directory.
import csv # ⛔️ ['__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', # '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__'] print(dir(csv))
If you pass a module object to the dir() function, it returns a list of names of the module's attributes.
We can see that the imported csv
module doesn't have a writer
attribute,
which makes it evident that we are shadowing the official csv
module with our
local csv.py
file.
If you try to import the csv
module in a file called csv.py
, you would get a
little different error message that means the same thing.
import csv with open('example.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile: # ⛔️ AttributeError: partially initialized module 'csv' has no attribute 'writer' (most likely due to a circular import) csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=',', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL) csv_writer.writerow(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl'])
Renaming your file solves the error.
You can use the sys
module to print all of the built-in module names if you
ever wonder if your local modules are clashing with built-in ones.
import sys # 👇️ print all built-in module names print(sys.builtin_module_names)