Problem with Python relative imports

Question

I am using Python 2.6 and have the Facebook API installed as a python package (under /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/facebook/...) which means, it is available with a plain import facebook or from facebook import ....

This works well, as long as there is no name clash. For example, in my project, I try to import the Facebook API in my code at project.facebook with

from .facebook import GraphAPI

From my understanding, this should work because the dot explicitly tells Python to look for the package one step up in the package hierachy and not try to import the project.facebook package it is already parsing.

However, it does not work:

Could not import project.views. Error was: cannot import name GraphAPI

project.views is another source code file that includes project.facebook (I am using Django but I'm not sure whether it has got something to do with that).

I know, I could just rename my source file or use from __future__ import absolute_import (that works just fine) but I consider both to be workarounds.

Is there any reason why the from .facebook import ... does not work?

Update:

Here is the output of ls -R in my workspace directory (which contains proj as the only project).

The following content is located under /home/chris/dev/workspace/, whereas the Facebook Python API is globally installed (in /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/facebook/...).

./proj/templates: ...

./proj/templates: ...> ./proj: README  src  static  templates

 ./proj/src:
 __init__.py  __init__.pyc  manage.py  settings.py  settings.pyc 
 settings_local.py  settings_local.pyc 
 urls.py  urls.pyc  proj

 ./proj/src/proj:
 __init__.py   admin.py   auth.py   facebook.py   forms.py   halloffame.py
 helper.py   image.py   management    
 middleware.pyc  models.pyc  openid.pyc
 stats.pyc   twitter.pyc  urls.pyc 
 views.pyc
 __init__.pyc  admin.pyc  auth.pyc  facebook.pyc  forms.pyc 
 halloffame.pyc  helper.pyc  image.pyc 
 middleware.py  models.py      
 openid.py   stats.py    twitter.py 
 urls.py      views.py

 ./proj/src/proj/management:
 __init__.py  __init__.pyc  commands

 ./proj/src/proj/management/commands:
 __init__.py  __init__.pyc  cronjob.py  cronjob.pyc

 ./proj/templates: ..../proj/templates: ...

 ./proj/templates: ...

Answer 1

Apparently (according to http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.5.html#pep-328), there is not way around from __future__ import absolute_import, so I guess I'll just have to be happy with that __future__ import to resolve my name shadowing problem.