Celery Worker Error: ImportError no module named celery

Question

I am getting an import error when I try to start my celery worker. I am not sure what the issue is. Any help would be highly appreciated.

My project:

email/__init__.py
    /celery.py

I try to run the application by calling :

celery worker --app=email

I have followed all the steps here - http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/getting-started/next-steps.html#about-the-app-argument

The traceback:

File "/Users/.../bin/celery", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('celery==3.0.24', 'console_scripts', 'celery')()
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/__main__.py, line 14, in main
main()
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 957, in main
cmd.execute_from_commandline(argv)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/celery.py", line 901, in execute_from_commandline
super(CeleryCommand, self).execute_from_commandline(argv)))
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 185, in execute_from_commandline
argv = self.setup_app_from_commandline(argv)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 300, in setup_app_from_commandline
self.app = self.find_app(app)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 317, in find_app
return self.find_app('%s.celery:' % (app.replace(':', ''), ))
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 311, in find_app
sym = self.symbol_by_name(app)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/bin/base.py", line 322, in symbol_by_name
return symbol_by_name(name, imp=import_from_cwd)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/kombu/utils/__init__.py", line 80, in symbol_by_name
module = imp(module_name, package=package, **kwargs)
File "/Users/.../lib/python2.7/site-packages/celery/utils/imports.py", line 99, in import_from_cwd
return imp(module, package=package)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 37, in import_module
__import__(name)
ImportError: No module named celery

Here is my celery.py

from __future__ import absolute_import

from celery import Celery
from app import mail

celery = Celery('email.celery', 
                broker = 'amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672//',
                backend = 'amqp://')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    celery.start()

@celery.task
def send_email(nickname, email):
    mail.send(msg) 

Answer 1

The problem is that you're saying "hey bro I heard you liked celery have some celery".

But really you should be saying, "hey bro I heard you installed celery, lets make a file named something really similar so we don't confuse the hell out of our environment".

Rename your email/celery.py file to email/celery_app.py

Then, when you start your worker, do the following:

celery -A email worker --app=email.celery_app:app --loglevel=info # etc.

The key is that you need to not have the file named celery.py in your file-structure, but if you don't, then you can't rely on celery to find celery, so you have to point it by specifying --app manually.