Can not find class during Puppet apply - puppet

Question

My puppet structure is as follows
/puppet
/manifests
/nodes
redis.pp
site.pp
/modules
The site.pp resembles
class base {
include ml-basefw
include ml-users
include ml-filelimits
include repoforge
include epel
class { 'ml-yumrepo':
base_url => "http://${puppet_server}/yumrepo"
}
}
import 'nodes/*.pp'
node default {
include base
}
When I run
puppet apply --modulepath=/puppet/modules:/puppet/manifests --noop --debug /puppet/manifests/nodes/redis.pp
I receive
Error: Could not find class base for redis-1.test.ml.com on node redis-1.test.ml.com
Is there something non-standard about my file layout that precludes me from using apply?
I am not the maintainer of the puppet module so I am not able to alter the file structure or layout.
There are numerous related questions but I wasn't able to relate them to the problem that I am having.
Edit1 : Adding redis.pp
node /^redis-\d+(.stage)?(.test)?(.aws)?.ml.com$/ {
include base
include epel
class { 'redis':
package_ensure => '2.8.15-1.el6.remi',
service_ensure => 'running',
conf_bind => '0.0.0.0',
conf_port => '6379',
}
firewall { '176 allow port 6379 for redis traffic':
chain => 'INPUT',
state => ['NEW'],
dport => '6379',
proto => 'tcp',
action => 'accept'
}
}

Answer 1

What happens when you run puppet apply against your site.pp file instead? You probably don't have a node definition in your redis.pp file (nor should you).

Answer 2

This does in fact look a little messy and convoluted.
What you want is
an actual base module
defining class base in /puppet/modules/base/manifests/init.pp
You should also loose the import statement by arranging your manifests better. If your version of Puppet is recent enough (I think 3.6+), just see the docs.

Answer 3

fist of all, puppet have the entry manifest file.
in master mode, the entry is site.pp and puppet deprated deprecated it from version 3.5, it started auto imported all manifest files in specified directory.
in apply mode, the entry is specified file in your command.
so it works fine in your production environment, puppet master read site.pp(contains class base) and import nodes/*.pp(redis.pp, contains node definition). but when you use "puppet apply /puppet/manifests/nodes/redis.pp", puppet just read redis.pp, no anyone tell puppet where the base class is.