OpenBB-finance/OpenBB · error · ImportError

Missing required package: {missing_package}. Please install

Error message

Missing required package: {missing_package}. Please install dependencies: pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests

What it means

An ImportError raised at import time of openbb_core/provider/utils/update_country_data.py, a maintenance script that scrapes country data with requests + BeautifulSoup and pycountry. If either pycountry or beautifulsoup4 is missing, the except ImportError block extracts the offending package name and re-raises with install instructions. It fails before any code in the module can run.

Source

Thrown at openbb_platform/core/openbb_core/provider/utils/update_country_data.py:37

"""

from __future__ import annotations

import argparse
import json
import re
import unicodedata
from datetime import date
from pathlib import Path

import requests

try:
    import pycountry
    from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
except ImportError as e:
    missing_package = str(e).split("'")[1] if "'" in str(e) else "unknown"
    raise ImportError(
        f"Missing required package: {missing_package}. "
        "Please install dependencies: pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests"
    ) from e

SCRIPT_DIR = Path(__file__).parent
DEFAULT_OUTPUT = SCRIPT_DIR / "country_data.json"

HEADERS = {
    "User-Agent": (
        "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) "
        "AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
    )
}

# Expected member counts for sanity checks (approximate — update when membership changes)
EXPECTED_COUNTS: dict[str, int | tuple[int, int]] = {
    "G7": 7,
    "G20": 20,  # 19 countries + EU (we only count countries)

View on GitHub (pinned to 3e071fcc2c)

Solutions

1. Install the extras: pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests.
2. If it was pulled in by a module scan (e.g. pytest collection), either install the deps or exclude the script from collection.
3. For library consumers: don't import this module; it is a data-generation utility, not runtime API - guard imports behind a try/except or optional extra.
4. After installing, verify with python -c 'import pycountry, bs4'.

Example fix

# before
from openbb_core.provider.utils.update_country_data import update_country_data  # ImportError

# after (install first: pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests)
from openbb_core.provider.utils.update_country_data import update_country_data

import importlib.util
for pkg in ('pycountry', 'bs4', 'requests'):
    if importlib.util.find_spec(pkg) is None:
        raise ImportError(f'install {pkg} first: pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests')

def can_import_update_country_data() -> bool:
    import importlib.util
    return all(importlib.util.find_spec(p) for p in ('pycountry', 'bs4', 'requests'))

try:
    from openbb_core.provider.utils.update_country_data import update_country_data
except ImportError as e:
    if 'Missing required package' in str(e):
        subprocess.run([sys.executable, '-m', 'pip', 'install', 'pycountry', 'beautifulsoup4', 'requests'], check=True)
        from openbb_core.provider.utils.update_country_data import update_country_data

When it happens

Trigger: Importing update_country_data (directly or via tooling that scans all modules) in an environment where 'pip install pycountry beautifulsoup4 requests' has not been run - e.g. a minimal install of openbb-core without the scraping extras, or a CI venv pruning optional dependencies.

Common situations: Running the country-data refresh script on a fresh machine; CI environments that only install core requirements; dependency conflicts where pip uninstalled bs4/pycountry during a resolve.

Related errors

• Unsupported file format. Please use .json or .env files.
• Failed to get Jupyter URL
• pywry is not installed
• Error adding trend line: {e}
• Trace '{trace}' not found

AI-assisted analysis of OpenBB-finance/OpenBB@3e071fcc2c (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/93e97d9611a6c162. Report an issue: GitHub.