FrontPageHandler will misrecognize a config-imported module as a plugin module, if the config is a single python file

[erikyao]

An Example

Suppose we have plugin config file config_web/pfocr.py, who imports a copy module itself:

import copy
from biothings.web.settings.default import QUERY_KWARGS

# Omitted

When we start pending_web with python3 index.py --conf=config_web/pfocr.py, FrontPageHandler will report:

[ERROR tornado.application:1798] Uncaught exception GET / (172.29.80.35)
    HTTPServerRequest(protocol='http', host='localhost:8000', method='GET', uri='/', version='HTTP/1.1', remote_ip='172.29.80.35')
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/opt/home/pending/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tornado/web.py", line 1713, in _execute
        result = await result
      File "/opt/home/pending/pending.api/web/handlers/__init__.py", line 60, in get
        apilist = [{
      File "/opt/home/pending/pending.api/web/handlers/__init__.py", line 61, in <listcomp>
        "_id": conf.API_PREFIX,
    AttributeError: module 'copy' has no attribute 'API_PREFIX'

This error won't happen if we start with the whole config folder, like python3 index.py --conf=config_web.

Cause

FrontPageHandler assumes that all modules nested in the root config is a plugin module:

        root = self.biothings.config._primary
        attrs = [getattr(root, attr) for attr in dir(root)]
        confs = [attr for attr in attrs if isinstance(attr, types.ModuleType)]
        apilist = [{
            "_id": conf.API_PREFIX,
            "status": "running"
        } for conf in confs]

However in this case, the root config is the imported pfocr.py and its own copy module is not a plugin module.