"ImportError: No module named _ssl" with dev_appserver.py from Google App Engine

Solution 1:

For the current GAE version (1.8.0 at least until 1.8.3), if you want to be able to debug SSL connections in your development environment, you will need to tweak a little bit the gae sandbox:

• add "_ssl" and "_socket" keys to the dictionary _WHITE_LIST_C_MODULES in /path-to-gae-sdk/google/appengine/tools/devappserver2/python/sandbox.py
• Replace the socket.py file provided by google in /path-to-gae-sdk/google/appengine/dis27 from the socket.py file from your Python framework.

IMPORTANT: Tweaking the sandbox environment might end up with functionality working on your local machine but not in production (for example, GAE only supports outbound sockets in production). I will recommend you to restore your sandbox when you are done developing that specific part of your app.

Solution 2:

The solution by jmg works, but instead of changing the sdk files, you could monkey patch the relevant modules.

Just put something like this on the beginning of your project setup.

# Just taking flask as an example
app = Flask('myapp')

if environment == 'DEV':
    import sys

    from google.appengine.tools.devappserver2.python import sandbox
    sandbox._WHITE_LIST_C_MODULES += ['_ssl', '_socket']

    from lib import copy_of_stdlib_socket.py as patched_socket

    sys.modules['socket'] = patched_socket
    socket = patched_socket

Solution 3:

I had to use a slightly different approach to get this working in CircleCI (unsure what peculiarity about their venv config caused this):

appengine_config.py

import os

if os.environ.get('SERVER_SOFTWARE', '').startswith('Development'):
    import imp
    import os.path
    import inspect
    from google.appengine.tools.devappserver2.python import sandbox

    sandbox._WHITE_LIST_C_MODULES += ['_ssl', '_socket']
    # Use the system socket.

    real_os_src_path = os.path.realpath(inspect.getsourcefile(os))
    psocket = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(real_os_src_path), 'socket.py')
    imp.load_source('socket', psocket)

Solution 4:

I had this problem because I wasn't vendoring ssl in my app.yaml file. I know the OP did that, but for those landing here for the OP's error, it's worth making sure lines like the following are in your app.yaml file:

libraries:
- name: ssl
  version: latest

Solution 5:

Stumbled upon this thread trying to work with Apples Push notification service and appengine... I was able to get this working without any monkey patching, by adding the SSL library in my app.yaml, as recommended in the official docs, hope that helps someone else :)