How to solve SyntaxError on autogenerated manage.py?

After testing with precise instructions (using python2 or python3 instead of just “python”) I’ve constated that no matter what the tutorial says, this works ONLY with python3.

Also, the tutorial recommends that a virtual environment is used (see Django documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/topics/install/#installing-official-release“). You can do this with pipenv --three. Once you’ve installed django with pipenv install django and activated your virtual environment with pipenv shell, python will refer to python3 when executing python manage.py runserver.

Pipenv documentation:
https://pipenv.kennethreitz.org/

Just activate your virtual environment.

Its a simple solution actually one i just ran into. Did you activate your virtual environment?

my terminal screenshot

You should activate your virtual environment.
In terminal, source env/bin/activate. Depending on your shell, something like (env) should now be a part of the prompt.

And now runserver should work. No need to delete exc part!

You can try with python3 manage.py runserver.
It works for me.

What am I wondering is though the django is installed to the container it may not be in the host machine where you are running the command. Then how will the command run. So since no above solutions worked for me.

I found out the running container and get into the running container using docker exec -it <container> bash then ran the command inside docker container. As we have the volumed container the changes done will also reflect locally. What ever command is to be run can be run inside the running container

The django-admin maybe the wrong file.I met the same problem which I did not found on a different computer the same set-up flow.

After comparing two project, I found several difference at manage.py and settings.py, then I realized I created 2.0 django project but run it with python2.

runwhich django-adminin iterm

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin/django-admin

It looks like I got a django-admin in python3 which I didn’t know why.So I tried to get the correct django-amin.

pip show django

then I got

Name: Django
Version: 1.11a1
Summary: A high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
Home-page: https://www.djangoproject.com/
Author: Django Software Foundation
Author-email: [email protected]
License: BSD
Location: /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Requires: pytz

In/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages, I found the django-admin

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py

So I created project again by

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py startproject myproject

then run

cd myproject
python manage.py runserver

succeeded

For future readers,
I too had the same issue. Turns out installing Python directly from website as well as having another version from Anaconda caused this issue. I had to uninstall Python2.7 and only keep anaconda as the sole distribution.

Have you entered the virtual environment for django? Run python -m venv myvenv if you have not yet installed.

We have to create a virtual environment inside the project, not outside the project..
Then it will solve..

I was experiencing the same but this was solved by running with specific python 3.6 as below:

python3.6 manage.py runserver

You must activate virtual environment where you have installed django.
Then run this command
– python manage.py runserver

Just do:

pipenv shell

Then repeat:

python manage.py runserver

And don’t delete from exc as suggested above.

It seems you have more than one version of Python on your computer.
Try and remove one and leave the only version you used to develop your application.

If need be, you can upgrade your version, but ensure you have only one version of Python on your computer.

I had same problem and could solve it. It is related to the version of Django you’ve installed, some of them are not supported by python 2.7. If you have installed Django with pip, it means that you are installing the latest version of that which probably is not supported in python 2.7, You can get more information about it here. I would suggest to python 3 or specify the version of Django during installing (which is 1.11 for python 2.7).

You can just mention your python version, like this,

python3.5 manage.py runserver   

It’s best to create a virtual environment and run your Django code inside this virtual environment, this helps in not changing your existing environments. Here are the basic steps to start with the virtual environment and Django.

1. Create a new Directory and cd into it.

   mkdir test , cd test

2. Install and Create a Virtual environment.

python3 -m pip install virtualenv virtualenv venv -p python3

3. Activate Virtual Environment: source venv/bin/activate

4. Install Django: pip install django

5. Start a new project: django-admin startproject myproject

6. cd to your project and Run Project:

cd myproject,

python manage.py runserver

7. You can see your project here: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

I solved this problem to uninstall the multiple version of Python.
Check Django Official Documentation for Python compatibility.

"Python compatibility

Django 2.1 supports Python 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7. Django 2.0 is the last version to support Python 3.4."

manage.py file

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys

if __name__ == '__main__':
   os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'work.settings')
   try:
       from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
   except ImportError as exc:
      raise ImportError(
        "Couldn't import Django. Are you sure it's installed and "
        "available on your PYTHONPATH environment variable? Did you "
        "forget to activate a virtual environment?"
      ) from exc
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

If removing "from exc" from second last line of this code will generate another error due to multiple versions of Python.

activate env by the Following Command

  source  pathetoYourEnv/bin/activate

then run command

python manage.py runserver

I solved same situation.

INSTALLED VERSION

python 3.6, django 2.1

SITUATION

I installed Node.js in Windows 10. After python manage.py runserver caused error.

ERROR

File "manage.py", line 14
) from exc
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

REASON

My python path changed to python-2.7 from python-3.6. (3.6 is correct in my PC.)

SOLUTION

Fix python path.

You should start your Virtual Environment,

How to do it?

First with terminal cd into the directory containing manage.py

Then type $source <myvenv>/bin/activate
replace with you Virtual Environment name, without angular brackets.

Another issue can that your root directory and venv mis-match.
The structure should be something like this:

|-website
     ..facebook
     ..manage.py
     ..myvenv
     ..some other files

That is your virtual environment and manage.py should be in the same folder. Solution to that is to restart the project. If you are facing this error you must haven’t coded anything yet, so restart.

I landed on the same exact exception because I forgot to activate the virtual environment.

The following could be the possible reasons,

1. The virtual environment is not enabled
2. The virtual environment is enabled but the python version is different

To create virtual environment

$ virtualenv --python=python3 venv

To activate the virtual environment

$ source venv/bin/activate

I had the exact same error, but then I later found out that I forget to activate the conda environment which had django and other required packages installed.

Solution: Create a conda or virtual environment with django installed,
and activate it before you use the command:

$ python manage.py migrate 

I was also getting the same error.

Then I went back to the folder where the environment folder is there and I forgot to activate a Virtual environment so only I was getting this error.

Go to that folder and activate the virtual environment.

$ source env/bin/activate

Solved my problem too when I activated my virtual environment using:

source bin/activate

I had this issue (Mac) and followed the instructions on the below page to install and activate the virtual environment

https://packaging.python.org/guides/installing-using-pip-and-virtual-environments/

$ cd [ top-level-django-project-dir ]

$ python3 -m pip install –user virtualenv

$ python3 -m venv env

$ source env/bin/activate

Once I had installed and activated the virtual env I checked it

$ which python

Then I installed django into the virtual env

$ pip install django

And then I could run my app

$ python3 manage.py runserver

When I got to the next part of the tutorial

$ python manage.py startapp polls

I encountered another error:

     File "manage.py", line 16

   ) from exc
            ^

   SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I removed

from exc

and it then created the polls directory

For running Python version 3, you need to use python3 instead of python.

The final command will be:

python3 manage.py runserver

The error is generated by using a later version of Django with an old python, probably of version 2.x.

To fix this I had to delete the .venv folder and recreate it with virtualenv -p python3 .venv && source .venv/bin/activate

The solution is straightforward. the exception from manage.py
is because when running the command with python, Django is unable
to predict the exact python version,
say you may have 3.6, 3.5, 3.8 and maybe just one of this versions pip module was used to install Django
to resolve this either use:

./manage.py `enter code here`<command>

or using the exact python version(x.x) stands:

pythonx.x manage.py <command>

else the use of virtual environments can come in handy
because its relates any pip django module easily to python version

• create env with pyenv or virtualenv
• activate (e.g in virtualenv => virtualenv env)
• run using python manage.py command

Activate your virtual environment then try collecting static files, that should work.

$ source venv/bin/activate
$ python manage.py collectstatic

You can solve this by adapting the code in your manage.py file to the following

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys


if __name__ == "__main__":
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "djangochallenge.settings")
    try:
        from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
    except ImportError:
        try:
            import django
        except ImportError:
            raise ImportError(
                "Couldn't import Django. Are you sure it's installed and "
                "available on your PYTHONPATH environment variable? Did you "
                "forget to activate a virtual environment?"
            )
        raise
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

and your server should work fine.

Same issue occurred to me,But what I did was,

Just Replaced:

python manage.py runserver

with

python3 manage.py runserver

in the terminal(macOsX). Because I am using Python version 3.x

I encountered the same error when using pipenv. The issue was caused by not accessing Django correctly from within the virtual environment.

The correct steps using pipenv:

1. Activate virtual environment: pipenv shell
2. Install Django: pipenv install django
3. Create a project: django-admin startproject myproject
4. Navigate into project folder: cd myproject
5. Start Django with pipenv: pipenv run python manage.py runserver

Note: Pipenv will use the correct python version and pip within the virtual environment.

This usually happens when Django isn’t installed, and you’re trying to run the manage.py file. Run pip3 install django or pip install django or python -m pip install django or python3 -m pip install django to install Django first.

If you think you’ve already installed Django, run pip/pip3/python -m pip/python3 -m pip show django. If you get a Warning: Package(s) not found: django, that means you haven’t installed Django yet.

If you have a virtual environment, run source env/bin/activate to activate the environment on a Unix based system, like a Mac or Linux, where env is the folder in which your virtual environment is contained. On Windows, run envScriptsactivate to activate the environment.

For me, this code worked

python3 manage.py runserver

Here’s a super nerdy way I solved the problem on linux with some extra hidden knowledge. If you know, you know 😉

1. install vim

sudo apt install vim 

2. map jj to escape for vim

vim ~/.vimrc
O
imap jj <Esc>
press the escape key

3. Use "python" instead of "python3" from now on.

vim ~/.bashrc
G
o
alias python=python3
jj
:wq
source ~/.bashrc

Most likely reason is that you did not activate the virtual environment in the project.

To solve it:

1. Activate the virtual environment
2. python manage.py runserver