Django - cannot import name 'config' from 'decouple'

You might have decouple installed in additional to python-decouple (two different packages).

If that is the case simply uninstall decouple

pip uninstall decouple

And ensure you have python-decouple installed

pip install python-decouple

The error happens because your python interpreter is looking for python-decouple package instead of decouple

Uninstall the existing package using this command pip uninstall decouple

And then install
pip install python-decouple

It shows the error because you are not installed the module python-decouple Just run pip install -r requirements.txt If it won't work then try it in env

pip install python-decouple

I was using pipenv to create a virtual environment and run the Django project

pipenv install -r requiremnts.txt
pipenv shell
python manage.py runserver

Interestingly above method kept throwing error that it cannot import config from decouple

then I tried:

python -m venv myEnv
myEnv/Scripts/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py runserver

and this ran the project successfully. I didnt understand why this would happen as I am doing pretty much same just using pip instead of pipenv.

I encountered the same issue, and in my case, it was caused by a conflict between "decouple" and "python-decouple" packages (I had installed both of them by mistake). As the latter creates a file called "decouple.py" in the installation virtual environment, finding the package of the same name, this will confuse the Django app of which of the 2 decouple reference it will consider. To fix this I had to uninstall the "decouple" package with pipenv uninstall decouple and install the "python-decouple" package with pipenv install python-decouple.

...

class AutoConfig(object):
    """
    Autodetects the config file and type.

    Parameters
    ----------
    search_path : str, optional
        Initial search path. If empty, the default search path is the
        caller's path.

    """
    ...

# A pré-instantiated AutoConfig to improve decouple's usability
# now just import config and start using with no configuration.
config = AutoConfig()

# Helpers
...

I struggled with this for a good hour, the fix was to close the current bash/terminal window and opening a new one.

After trying almost everything, installing the python-decouple for the whole system, as opposed to in an environment, worked for me. So left the virtual environment, installed python-decouple then activated back my environment again. It works for me.

Let me know if this helps.