python / python/mypy

Problems with wrapper classes

Open
#5,523 9 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

feature needs discussion priority-1-normal
Dominant language
Python
Stars
20.6k
Forks
3.3k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

Let's say I have a Person class with a bunch of attributes; it comes from a library I don't control but for which type information exists. Now I have a PersonWrapper class which provides for defaults so that accessing missing attributes never raises an exception (think, use of instances in f-strings).

class PersonWrapper:
    def __init__(self, person: Person, default: Any = '') -> None:
        self.person = person
        self.default = default

    def __getattr__(self, attribute: str) -> Any:
        return getattr(self.person, attribute, self.default)

In general, any place I want to use a Person I might also want to use a PersonWrapper, so I have variables that can be assigned either a Person or a PersonWrapper. mypy seems not to be able to handle this, and I don't really know of any way to tell the type checker that it should treat Person and PersonWrapper as equivalent. For example, if I have this code:

def print_person(original_person: Person) -> None:
    person = PersonWrapper(original_person)
    # This attribute might be missing from the original person object.
    print(f'  Username: {person.username}')
    person = original_person
    # Only print this if the attribute exists.
    phone = getattr(person, 'phoneNumber', None)
    if phone:
        print(f'    Phone: {phone}')

mypy complains about the assignment of original_person to person:

error: Incompatible types in assignment (expression has type "Person", variable has type "PersonWrapper")

Because Person has some dynamic attribute access as well, I can't change the original assignment to:

    person: Person = cast(Person, PersonWrapper(original_person))

because then I get errors such as:

error: "Person" has no attribute "office"

The way I fix this is by changing the second assignment to use cast():

    person = cast(PersonWrapper, original_person)

This feels wrong, but maybe it's okay. What I think i'd like to do is to create an equivalence between PersonWrapper and Person, but then I'd probably still have to handle the dynamic parts of Person in some way. FWIW I didn't have much luck using Union[Person, PersonWrapper] either.

Is there a better way to handle wrapper classes?

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 with the reported Person/PersonWrapper example and the interaction among assignment inference, Union[Person, PersonWrapper], cast(), and dynamic getattr; no mypy source file or test is named. Define the desired typing behavior and add a focused regression test once an implementation location is identified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.