When I have this issue on Flask or Django, I usually do my relative imports as bellow, and once debugg is complete I reset back to the normal way of doing imports with Django:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from models import Article 
else: 
    from .models import Article

Basically depending of wether you launch your code from Python using main or from the Django server, it will select the correct way to handle your imports.

And when you want to launch your code from Python you add at the end of your code "if name == 'main':" with then your code to run:

from typing import List
# other imports
# Your article import
if __name__ == '__main__':
    from models import Article 
else: 
    from .models import Article
# Your code

def my_code_to_run():
    article=Article()

# Your main
if __name__ == '__main__':
    my_code_to_run()

################ IMPORTANT WHZN USING DATABASE CONNS FROM SETTINGS.PY Note that if you are calling Databases that are setup in settings.py of Django the call will not work as the connections won't be defined...

Sorry to have forgotten to post a reply to this, but the actual issue was that when working with Django, I tried to run each script on its own. Instead, with Django, you just write each script, save it, and Django automatically updates (that is, after you run the runserver command). At least, I think that's what solved the issue given my noviceness. Hope this helps the next person to encounter this issue.

1. Look into management commands. That's probably the easiest way to actually load up an instance of your server, so that you can load up the models alongside your script.

2. I'm having a bit of trouble following what you're trying to do. Normally, when creating an api, you're trying to serve something; thus is the whole point of django (it's just a series of requests/responses). Most of the time, you can use an API client (httpie, thunder, rapidapi, postman, etc.) to test the endpoints you create, however, I don't know what you have in your client.py file so I don't know the context for your project scope.

It seems, from Python docs and experimenting, that relative imports (involving ., .. etc) only work if

1. the importing module has a __name__ other than __main__, and further,
2. the __name__ of the importing module is pkg.module_name, i.e., it has to be imported from above in the directory hierarchy (to have a parent pkg as part of it's __name__.)

OR

the importing module is being specified via module syntax that includes a parent pkg as python -m pkg.module, in which case it's __name__ is still __main__, so it is being run as a script, yet relative imports will work. Here __package__ is set and used to find the parent package while __name__ is __main__; more here.

[After all that, it appears that __package__ and sys.path are key to determining if/how relative imports work. __name__ indicates script or module(i.e., __main__ or module_name). __package__ indicates where in the package the relative imports occur with respect to, and the top of __package__ needs to be in sys.path.]

So, continuing with @AmitTendulkar 's example, if you run this as > python main.py or > python -m main or > python -m ecommerce.products from the project root directory, or enter interactive python from that root directory and import main, or import ecommerce.products the relative imports in products.py will work.

But if you > python products.py or > python -m products from within ecommerce directory, or enter interactive python from that ecommerce directory and import products they will fail.

It is helpful to add

print("In module products __package__, __name__ ==", __package__, __name__)

etc. in each file to debug.

UPDATE:

How imports work depend on sys.path and __package__, not on __name__. Issued from /home/jj, > python sub/mod.py has a sys.path, __package__ of /home/jj/sub, None -absolute imports of modules in sys.path work, relative imports fail.

> python -m sub.mod has sys.path, __package__ of /home/jj, sub -absolute imports of modules in sys.path work, relative imports work relative to sys.path + __package__.

It is more helpful to add

import sys    
print("In module products sys.path[0], __package__ ==", sys.path[0], __package__)

etc. in each file to debug.