How to Include Third Party Python Libraries in Google App Engine

How to include third party Python libraries in Google App Engine?

Actually I think this answer fits better here.

If you want to use 3rd party libraries that are not included in this list, then you'll have to add them manually.

In order to include manually any other library you have to have them inside the directory where the app.yaml lives. So for example if you have the following structure:

hello
├── libs
│   └── bs4 
├── hello.py 
└── app.yaml

then in your hello.py you have to put these two lines in the beginning of the file:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, 'libs')

After doing that you'll be able to use any 3rd party library that you're going to put in that libs directory.

For example:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

How do I manage third-party Python libraries with Google App Engine? (virtualenv? pip?)

(Jun 2021) This post is over a decade old, and so an updated answer is warranted now.

Python 3: list 3P libraries in requirements.txt along with any desired version#s; they'll be automatically installed by Google upon deployment. (This is the same technique used if you decide to migrate your app to Google Cloud Functions or Cloud Run.)
Python 2 without built-in 3P libraries (regular 3P libraries):

Create requirements.txt as above
Install/self-bundle/copy them locally, say to lib, via pip install -t lib -r requirements.txt
Create appengine_config.py as shown in step 5 on this page

Python 2 with built-in 3P libraries (special set of 3P libraries):

All listed 3P libraries linked above are "built-in," meaning they're available on App Engine servers so you don't have to copy/self-bundle them w/your app (like in #2 above)
It suffices to list them with an available version in the libraries: section of your app.yaml like this
(Don't put built-in libraries in requirements.txt nor use pip install to install them locally unless you want to self-bundle because, say if you need a newer version of the built-in library.)
Create appengine_config.py like the above.

If you have a Python 2 app with both built-in and non-built-in 3P libraries, use the techniques in both #2 and #3 above (built-in libraries in app.yaml and non-built-in libraries in requirements.txt and run the pip install cmd above). One of the improvements in the second generation runtimes like Python 3 is that all these games with 3P libraries go away magically (see #1 above).

Example: Flask

Flask is a 3rd-party micro web framework, and it's an interesting case for this specific question. For Python 3, they all go into requirements.txt, so you'd just add flask to that file, and you're done. (Just deploy from there.)

For Python 2, it's even more interesting because it's a built-in library. Unfortunately, the version on App Engine servers is 0.12. Who wants to use that when we're at/beyond 2.0.3 now?!? So instead of putting it in app.yaml like other built-in libraries, you'd pretend the built-in version doesn't exist and put it in requirements.txt then run pip2 install -t lib -r requirements.txt to bundle/vendor it with your application code. (However, the final version for Python 2 is 1.1.4, so that's what gets installed.)

Adding a third-party library (twilio) to project using Google App Engine and Django

My python lib's dir are two dir.

1) /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/...

2) /usr/local/lib/python2.7/...

My project points at 1), but pip install at 2)...

I tried at 1) ./pip install twilio. and so, it works!

thanks.

Uploading Python third party libraries

What I did is created a file called fix_path.py in my root directory that looks like this:

import os
import sys
import jinja2   
# path to lib direcotory
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'lib'))

Then I created a lib directory, and drop the module in there.

For example, I use WTForms. My file structure looks like this.

lib
- wtforms
fix_path.py
somefile.py

when I am ready to call it from my somefile script

import fix_path # has to be first.
import wtforms

here is this example in my github source. checkout fix_path.py for setup and views.py for usage.

Django on Google App Engine- How to import/use 3rd party libraries?

There's a good guide on how to use Django on GAE here:
https://cloud.google.com/python/django/appengine

When you follow that guide you get a requirements-vendor.txt file. Edit that file and add django-geojson and django-leaflet to it.
After that you can run pip install -r requirements-vendor.txt -t lib/ to install them.

Now you can follow the rest of the guide for instructions on how to upload everything to GAE.

How to Include Third Party Python Libraries in Google App Engine