dacite
This module simplifies creation of data classes (PEP 557) from dictionaries.
Installation
To install dacite, simply use pip:
$ pip install dacite
Requirements
Minimum Python version supported by dacite is 3.6.
Quick start
from dataclasses import dataclass
from dacite import from_dict
@dataclass
class User:
name: str
age: int
is_active: bool
data = {
'name': 'John',
'age': 30,
'is_active': True,
}
user = from_dict(data_class=User, data=data)
assert user == User(name='John', age=30, is_active=True)
Features
Dacite supports following features:
nested structures
(basic) types checking
optional fields (i.e. typing.Optional)
unions
forward references
collections
custom type hooks
Motivation
Passing plain dictionaries as a data container between your functions or methods isn't a good practice. Of course you can always create your custom class instead, but this solution is an overkill if you only want to merge a few fields within a single object.
Fortunately Python has a good solution to this problem - data classes. Thanks to @dataclass decorator you can easily create a new custom type with a list of given fields in a declarative manner. Data classes support type hints by design.
However, even if you are using data classes, you have to create their instances somehow. In many such cases, your input is a dictionary - it can be a payload from a HTTP request or a raw data from a database. If you want to convert those dictionaries into data classes, dacite is your best friend.
This library was originally created to simplify creation of type hinted data transfer objects (DTO) which can cross the boundaries in the application architecture.
It's important to mention that dacite is not a data validation library. There are dozens of awesome data validation projects and it doesn't make sense to duplicate this functionality within dacite. If you want to validate your data first, you should combine dacite with one of data validation library.
Please check Use Case section for a real-life example.
Usage
Dacite is based on a single function - dacite.from_dict. This function takes 3 parameters:
data_class - data class type
data - dictionary of input data
config (optional) - configuration of the creation process, instance of dacite.Config class
Configuration is a (data) class with following fields:
type_hooks
forward_references
check_types
strict
The examples below show all features of from_dict function and usage of all Config parameters.
Nested structures
You can pass a data with nested dictionaries and it will create a proper result.
@dataclass
class A:
x: str
y: int
@dataclass
class B:
a: A
data = {
'a': {
'x': 'test',
'y': 1,
}
}
result = from_dict(data_class=B, data=data)
assert result == B(a=A(x='test', y=1))
Optional fields
Whenever your data class has a Optional field and you will not provide input data for this field, it will take the None value.
from typing import Optional
@dataclass
class A:
x: str
y: Optional[int]
data = {
'x': 'test',
}
result = from_dict(data_class=A, data=data)
assert result == A(x='test', y=None)
Unions
If your field can accept multiple types, you should use Union. Dacite will try to match data with provided types one by one. If none will match, it will raise UnionMatchError exception.
from typing import Union
@dataclass
class A:
x: str
@dataclass
class B:
y: int
@dataclass
class C:
u: Union[A, B]
data = {
'u': {
'y': 1,
},
}
result = from_dict(data_class=C, data=data)
assert result == C(u=B(y=1))
Collections
Dacite supports fields defined as collections. It works for both - basic types and data classes.
@dataclass
class A:
x: str
y: int
@dataclass
class B:
a_list: List[A]
data = {
'a_list': [
{
'x': 'test1',
'y': 1,
},
{
'x': 'test2',
'y': 2,
}
],
}
result = from_dict(data_class=B, data=data)
assert result == B(a_list=[A(x='test1', y=1), A(x='test2', y=2)])
Type hooks
You can use Config.type_hooks argument if you want to transform the input data of a data class field with given type into the new value. You have to pass a following mapping: {Type: callable}, where callable is a Callable[[Any], Any].
@dataclass
class A:
x: str
data = {
'x': 'TEST',
}
result = from_dict(data_class=A, data=data, config=Config(type_hooks={str: str.lower}))
assert result == A(x='test')
If a data class field type is a Optional[T] you can pass both - Optional[T] or just T - as a key in type_hooks. The same with generic collections, e.g. when a field has type List[T] you can use List[T] to transform whole collection or T to transform each item.
Forward References
Definition of forward references can be passed as a {'name': Type} mapping to Config.forward_references. This dict is passed to typing.get_type_hints() as the globalns param when evaluating each field's type.
@dataclass
class X:
y: "Y"
@dataclass
class Y:
s: str
data = from_dict(X, {"y": {"s": "text"}}, Config(forward_references={"Y": Y}))
assert data == X(Y("text"))
Types checking
There are rare cases when dacite built-in type checker can not validate your types (e.g. custom generic class) or you have such functionality covered by other library and you don't want to validate your types twice. In such case you can disable type checking with Config(check_types=False). By default types checking is enabled.
T = TypeVar('T')
class X(Generic[T]):
pass
@dataclass
class A:
x: X[str]
x = X[str]()
assert from_dict(A, {'x': x}, config=Config(check_types=False)) == A(x=x)
Strict mode
By default from_dict ignores additional keys (not matching data class field) in the input data. If you want change this behaviour set Config.strict to True. In case of unexpected key from_dict will raise UnexpectedDataError exception.
Exceptions
Whenever something goes wrong, from_dict will raise adequate exception. There are a few of them:
WrongTypeError - raised when a type of a input value does not match with a type of a data class field
MissingValueError - raised when you don't provide a value for a required field
UnionMatchError - raised when provided data does not match any type of Union
ForwardReferenceError - raised when undefined forward reference encountered in dataclass
UnexpectedDataError - raised when strict mode is enabled and the input data has not matching keys
Development
First of all - if you want to submit your pull request, thank you very much! I really appreciate your support.
Please remember that every new feature, bug fix or improvement should be tested. 100% code coverage is a must have.
We are using a few static code analysis tools to increase the code quality (black, mypy, pylint). Please make sure that you are not generating any errors/warnings before you submit your PR. You can find current configuration in .travis.yml file.
Last but not least, if you want to introduce new feature, please discuss it first within an issue.
How to start
Clone dacite repository:
$ git clone git@github.com:konradhalas/dacite.git
Create and activate virtualenv in the way you like:
$ python3 -m venv dacite-env
$ source dacite-env/bin/activate
Install all dacite dependencies:
$ pip install -e .[dev]
To run tests you just have to fire:
$ pytest
Use case
There are many cases when we receive "raw" data (Python dicts) as a input to our system. HTTP request payload is a very common use case. In most web frameworks we receive request data as a simple dictionary. Instead of passing this dict down to your "business" code, it's a good idea to create something more "robust".
Following example is a simple flask app - it has single /products endpoint. You can use this endpoint to "create" product in your system. Our core create_product function expects data class as a parameter. Thanks to dacite we can easily build such data class from POST request payload.
from dataclasses import dataclass
from typing import List
from flask import Flask, request, Response
import dacite
app = Flask(__name__)
@dataclass
class ProductVariantData:
code: str
description: str = ''
stock: int = 0
@dataclass
class ProductData:
name: str
price: float
variants: List[ProductVariantData]
def create_product(product_data: ProductData) -> None:
pass # your business logic here
@app.route("/products", methods=['POST'])
def products():
product_data = dacite.from_dict(
data_class=ProductData,
data=request.get_json(),
)
create_product(product_data=product_data)
return Response(status=201)
What if we want to validate our data (e.g. check if code has 6 characters)? Such features are out of scope of dacite but we can easily combine it with one of data validation library. Let's try with marshmallow.
First of all we have to define our data validation schemas:
from marshmallow import Schema, fields, ValidationError
def validate_code(code):
if len(code) != 6:
raise ValidationError('Code must have 6 characters.')
class ProductVariantDataSchema(Schema):
code = fields.Str(required=True, validate=validate_code)
description = fields.Str(required=False)
stock = fields.Int(required=False)
class ProductDataSchema(Schema):
name = fields.Str(required=True)
price = fields.Decimal(required=True)
variants = fields.Nested(ProductVariantDataSchema(many=True))
And use them within our endpoint:
@app.route("/products", methods=['POST'])
def products():
schema = ProductDataSchema()
result, errors = schema.load(request.get_json())
if errors:
return Response(
response=json.dumps(errors),
status=400,
mimetype='application/json',
)
product_data = dacite.from_dict(
data_class=ProductData,
data=result,
)
create_product(product_data=product_data)
return Response(status=201)
Still dacite helps us to create data class from "raw" dict with validated data.
Authors