Hi folks,

In this post we discuss how to fix an error you may come across when you run import

psycopg2. You may come across this error if you have recently updated openssl to a version greater than 1.0.0 on Mac OS.

The error looks like

  File "/Users/someuser/.virtualenvs/top_games/lib/python3.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/dialects/postgresql/psycopg2.py", line 737, in dbapi
    import psycopg2
  File "/Users/someuser/.virtualenvs/top_games/lib/python3.7/site-packages/psycopg2/__init__.py", line 50, in 
    from psycopg2._psycopg import (                     # noqa
ImportError: dlopen(/Users/someuser/.virtualenvs/top_games/lib/python3.7/site-packages/psycopg2/_psycopg.cpython-37m-darwin.so, 2): Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/libssl.1.0.0.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/someuser/.virtualenvs/top_games/lib/python3.7/site-packages/psycopg2/_psycopg.cpython-37m-darwin.so
  Reason: image not found

Here is how to fix it:

Activate your project’s virtual environment.

Update psycopg2 using the command:

pip install psycopg2 --upgrade

If you come across an error like

ld: library not found for -lssl

then run the following two commands in your terminal

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

Then, try the aforementioned pip command once more.

That’s it. Once psycopg2 is upgraded, the import issue should be fixed.