python / python/mypy

Code review request: support for asdict returning TypedDict

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#10,104 4 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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feature topic-dataclasses
Dominant language
Python
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Description

I'm sorry for abusing the issue tracker, but I'm not sure how else to notify someone who could perform a code-review (I did try pinging/mentions). And no worries of course :)

I have brought this PR up-to-date and passing tests again and would like to request a re-review: https://github.com/python/mypy/pull/8583/

@JukkaL Perhaps you have the time at some point to take a look or could ping someone who does?

Although the feature is already mentioned in #5152, I'll try to pitch it.

The pitch:

I have a dataclass that happens to have the same (or a subset of the same) fields as another class.
The list is potentially long, and each one has a different type.
I would like to construct the class out of the dataclass, without having to explicitly list each field as an argument to the class's constructor. It's easy to do this at run-time, but I would like to ensure that it is also statically checked.

To avoid listing each field manually, I can take advantage of splatting the TypedDict.
This should allow mypy to type-check that I do in fact pass the correct arguments to the class constructor.

@dataclass
class FooEntity:
  bar: str
  # long list of fields...

class Foo:
  def __init__(bar: str, ...): pass

def create_foo_from_entity(foo: FooEntity) -> Foo:
  return Foo(**asdict(foo))

I could think of a similar example with a function instead of a class constructor.

You could also have a case where a function is expected to return a certain TypedDict (let's say it's part of an existing API), and you have decided to use dataclasses as your internal representation, among other reasons, because they can have methods, are mutable, and possible to build-up incrementally. To avoid having to explicitly construct the TypedDict from the dataclass (which may include nested dataclasses), you could just call asdict on it and still be assured that the types match what is expected.

I can't otherwise see many use cases for this, as I would assume that many people just directly serialize the return value of asdict, and so don't use it in a precisely-typed manner.

Finally, as a future idea, it would be interesting to be able to use a type annotation AsDict[MyDataclass] to represent the TypedDict returned by calling asdict(instance_of_my_dataclass). This would allow the information about which TypedDict was returned to flow across function boundaries.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing pull request 8583, which contains the proposed support, and compare it with the feature discussion in issue 5152. The issue's immediate request is a code review rather than an unstarted implementation; completion would require resolving the review and establishing whether the proposed asdict-to-TypedDict behavior should be accepted.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
15/100

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