Variable auto completion not working in Eclipse with Pydev

Question

• Windows: Windows 7 Professional
• Python: python-3.6.1-amd64.exe
• pyodbc: pyodbc-4.0.16-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl
• Eclipse: Neon.3Release(4.6.3) Build id: 20170314-1500
• PyDev for Eclipse: 5.7.0201704111357

---

After I installed pyodbc by run pip install pyodbc-4.0.16-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl , I got unresolved import pyodbc in Eclipse. So I manually added "pyodbc" under Python Interpreter > Forced Builtins and "unresolved import pyodbc" issue solved in Eclipse.

However, auto completion does not work for variable in Eclipse with Pydev. I can get auto completion for pyodbc.connect but not conn.cursor() unless I define conn = pyodbc.Connection .

Auto completion not working for variable conn

import pyodbc

if __name__ == '__main__':
    conn = pyodbc.connect('Connecting String....')
    cur = conn.Cursor()

Auto completion works for variable conn

import pyodbc

if __name__ == '__main__':
    conn = pyodbc.Connection
    conn = pyodbc.connect('Connecting String....')
    cur = conn.Cursor()

Answer 1

This is mostly because PyDev can't infer what pyodbc.connect returns (it can't really execute that, it can only see that it's a method call and try to guess from its docstring).

You can help it though by adding type hints in docstrings as:

#: :type conn: pyodbc.Connection

See: http://www.pydev.org/manual_adv_type_hints.html for more info