Add `alias` as a `field()` parameter for dataclasses
@ericvsmith is already working on this.
Since Jan 20, 2023.
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Description
Feature or enhancement
Add an alias parameter to dataclasses.field() which behaves like alias in attrs.field() (see here and search for "alias"). It has the effect that it changes the corresponding argument name in the synthesized __init__.
Pitch
Since attrs 22.2.0, attrs.field has an alias parameter that does the following:
from attrs import define, field
@define
class C:
_name: tuple[str, str] = field(alias="name")
@property
def full_name(self) -> str:
return " ".join(self._name)
c = C(name=("John", "Smith")) # `name` not `_name`
print(c.full_name)
The typical use-case for this is private instance variables as in the above example. But there could be other use-cases as well, like
@define
class C:
viewport: tuple[int, int] = field(alias="vp")
C(vp=(2, 4)) # constructor uses shorthand
Besides being a useful feature in and of itself, another reason to add this to the standard library is that it would bring dataclasses in line with dataclass_transform which already supports the alias parameter in field(): https://peps.python.org/pep-0681/#field-specifier-parameters . It is currently a bit strange that dataclass_transform has a feature that dataclasses.dataclass doesn't actually have.
Previous discussion
https://discuss.python.org/t/add-alias-as-a-field-parameter-for-dataclasses/22988/1
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