Opened 3 years ago
Last modified 3 years ago
#32978 closed Cleanup/optimization
Provide more informative error message on loaddata/dumpdata --format yaml when PyYAML not installed — at Version 1
| Reported by: | Brad | Owned by: | nobody |
|---|---|---|---|
| Component: | Core (Serialization) | Version: | 3.2 |
| Severity: | Normal | Keywords: | serializers, yaml, dumpdata, loaddata |
| Cc: | Triage Stage: | Accepted | |
| Has patch: | yes | Needs documentation: | no |
| Needs tests: | no | Patch needs improvement: | no |
| Easy pickings: | yes | UI/UX: | no |
Description (last modified by )
While the docs at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/topics/serialization/#serialization-formats do mention that PyYAML is required for the yaml serializer, ./manage.py dumpdata|loaddata --format yaml, provides quite a sparse error message, "Unable to serialize database: module yaml not found" (from here: https://github.com/django/django/blob/fbb1984046ae00bdf0b894a6b63294395da1cce8/django/core/management/commands/dumpdata.py#L245) if PyYAML is not installed.
This could be especially confusing for new Django developers who are not aware that yaml is pointing to the PyYAML project on PyPI and is not a part of Django. Since yaml is the only one of the four serializers requiring an add-on third party package, it may be helpful to provide a more verbose error in this case.
For instance, something like. "Serializing to and from YAML requires the PyYAML package. Install PyYAML to use the YAML format."