Implicit TypeVar expansion of a Generic via another generic method
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Description
I really struggled to come up with a title for this, so I apologize for the ambiguity. I also considered "Spooky TypeVar action at a distance".
I'm investigating strategies for static type checking of apache beam, which is a streaming pipeline API.
Basically, I have a generic Transform with an In and Out type, and another generic Collection that wants to apply its type to the input type of Transform in order to produce a new Collection with the Transform's output type. These operations are repeated in a chain to form a pipeline:
Collection[None] -> Transform[None, A] -> Collection[A] -> Transform[A, B] -> Collection[B]
The catch is that a Transform's output type can be related to its input type via a TypeVar, and a Collection contains the concrete type of that input TypeVar. So when we call Collection.apply(transform) we want to resolve that chain of TypeVar dependencies to produce an expanded/concrete output type:
from typing import *
T = TypeVar('T')
InT = TypeVar('InT')
OutT = TypeVar('OutT')
class Transform(Generic[InT, OutT]):
"Takes an input Collection and produces an output Collection"
def __init__(self, fn: Callable[[InT], OutT]):
self.fn = fn
def call(self, arg: InT) -> OutT:
return self.fn(arg)
def get_op(f: Callable[[InT], OutT]) -> Transform[InT, OutT]:
"Get a Transform from a callable"
return Transform(f)
class Collection(Generic[T]):
"Collection of elements"
def apply(self, op: Transform[T, OutT]) -> 'Collection[OutT]':
"""
Apply the this Collection to a Transform and produce a new
output Collection
"""
# -- test:
def make_string(x: None) -> str:
return 'foo'
def make_ones(x: T) -> Tuple[T, int]:
return (x, 1)
c1: Collection = Collection()
str_op = get_op(make_string)
reveal_type(str_op) # revealed: Transform[None, builtins.str*]
c2 = p1.apply(str_op)
reveal_type(c2) # revealed: Collection[builtins.str*]
tuple_op = get_op(make_ones)
reveal_type(tuple_op) # revealed: Transform[T`-1, Tuple[T`-1, builtins.int]]
c3 = c2.apply(tuple_op)
# Desired type is Collection[Tuple[builtins.str, builtins.int]]
reveal_type(c3) # revealed: Collection[Tuple[T`-1, builtins.int]]
The crux of the issue is here:
class Collection(Generic[T]):
"Collection of elements"
def apply(self, op: Transform[T, OutT]) -> 'Collection[OutT]':
"""
Apply the this Collection to a Transform and produce a new
output Collection
"""
My naive desire was that my Collection[builtins.str*] would apply its str type to T-1 of Transform[T-1, Tuple[T-1, builtins.int]] to produce Collection[Tuple[builtins.str, builtins.int]].
Instead I get:
error: Argument 1 to "apply" of "Collection" has incompatible type "Transform[T, Tuple[T, int]]"; expected "Transform[str, Tuple[T, int]]"
Is there any future universe where this is possible in mypy, or is it just too ambiguous?
Is it possible to write a mypy plugin to produce the desired result for Collection.apply?
- edit: clarified relationship between Transform and Collection TypeVars
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the provided generic Transform/Collection example in mypy, focusing on Collection.apply and its reveal_type results. Trace how the checker handles the TypeVar relationship and assess whether a plugin entry point can support it; done means establishing a clearly scoped implementation path or documenting why the requested inference is not supported.
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
- 35/100