How to indicate to mypy an object has certain attributes?

Question

I am using some classes that derived from a parent class ( Widget ); among the children, some have certain attributes ( posx and posy ) but some don't.

import enum
from dataclasses import dataclass
from typing import List


class Color(enum.IntEnum):
    GLOWING_IN_THE_DARK = enum.auto()
    BROWN_WITH_RAINBOW_DOTS = enum.auto()


@dataclass
class Widget:
    """Generic class for widget"""


@dataclass
class Rectangle(Widget):
    """A Color Rectangle"""

    posx: int
    posy: int
    width: int = 500
    height: int = 200
    color: Color = Color.BROWN_WITH_RAINBOW_DOTS


@dataclass
class Group(Widget):
    children: List[Widget]


@dataclass
class Button(Widget):
    """A clickable button"""

    posx: int
    posy: int
    width: int = 200
    height: int = 100
    label: str = "some label"

Even after doing some filtering with only widgets with these attributes, mypy is not able to recognize that they should have.

Is there a way to indicate to mypy that we have an object with a given attribute?

For example, the following function and call:

def some_function_that_does_something(widgets: List[Widget]):
    """A useful docstring that says what the function does"""
    widgets_with_pos = [w for w in widgets if hasattr(w, "posx") and hasattr(w, "posy")]

    if not widgets_with_pos:
        raise AttributeError(f"No widget with position found among list {widgets}")

    first_widget = widgets_with_pos[0]
    pos_x = first_widget.posx
    pos_y = first_widget.posy
    print(f"Widget {first_widget} with position: {(pos_x, pos_y)}")


some_widgets = [Group([Rectangle(0, 0)]), Button(10, 10, label="A button")]
some_function_that_does_something(some_widgets)

would return a result as expected: Widget Button(posx=10, posy=10, width=200, height=100, label='A button') with position: (10, 10)

But mypy would complain:

__check_pos_and_mypy.py:53: error: "Widget" has no attribute "posx"
        pos_x = first_widget.posx
                ^
__check_pos_and_mypy.py:54: error: "Widget" has no attribute "posy"
        pos_y = first_widget.posy
                ^
Found 2 errors in 1 file (checked 1 source file)

How to do?

Maybe, one way could be to change the design of the classes:

• Subclass of Widget with the position (eg WidgetWithPos )
• Rectangle and Button would derive from this class
• We indicate in our function: widget_with_pos: List[WidgetWithPos] =...

... however, I cannot change the original design of the classes and mypy might still complain with something like:

List comprehension has incompatible type List[Widget]; expected List[WidgetWithPos]

Of course, we could put a bunch of # type:ignore but that will clutter the code and I am sure there is a smarter way;)

Thanks!

Answer 1

I would use typing.Protocol and typing.cast to solve this. typing.Protocol allows us to define " structural types " — types that are defined by attributes or properties rather than the classes they inherit from — and typing.cast is a function that has no effect at runtime, but allows us to assert to the type-checker that an object has a certain type.

Note that Protocol has been added in Python 3.8 so for 3.7 (3.6 does not support dataclasses , although it also has a backport), we need to use typing_extensions (which is a dependency of mypy by the way).

import sys
from dataclasses import dataclass
from typing import cast, List

# Protocol has been added in Python 3.8+
if sys.version_info >= (3, 8):
    from typing import Protocol
else:
    from typing_extensions import Protocol


@dataclass
class Widget:
    """Generic class for widget"""


class WidgetWithPosProto(Protocol):
    """Minimum interface of all widgets that have a position"""
    posx: int
    posy: int


def some_function_that_does_something(widgets: List[Widget]):
    """A useful docstring that says what the function does"""

    widgets_with_pos = [
        cast(WidgetWithPosProto, w)
        for w in widgets
        if hasattr(w, "posx") and hasattr(w, "posy")
    ]

    if not widgets_with_pos:
        raise AttributeError(f"No widget with position found among list {widgets}")

    first_widget = widgets_with_pos[0]
    pos_x = first_widget.posx
    pos_y = first_widget.posy
    print(f"Widget {first_widget} with position: {(pos_x, pos_y)}")

This passes MyPy .

---

Further reading:

• Python documentation for typing.Protocol
• PEP 544 , introducing typing.Protocol and explaining the concept of structural subtyping.
• MyPy documentation for Protocol s and structural subtyping.
• Python documentation for typing.cast .
• MyPy documentation for typing.cast .

Answer 2

Here's a small variation on Alex Waygood's answer , to remove the cast . The trick is to put the @runtime_checkable decorator on the Protocol class. It simply makes isinstance() do the hasattr() checks.

import sys
from dataclasses import dataclass
from typing import List

# Protocol has been added in Python 3.8+
# so this makes the code backwards-compatible
# without adding any dependencies
# (typing_extensions is a MyPy dependency already)

if sys.version_info >= (3, 8):
    from typing import Protocol, runtime_checkable
else:
    from typing_extensions import Protocol, runtime_checkable


@dataclass
class Widget:
    """Generic class for widget"""


@runtime_checkable
class WithPos(Protocol):
    """Minimum interface of all widgets that have a position"""
    posx: int
    posy: int


def some_function_that_does_something(widgets: List[Widget]):
    """A useful docstring that says what the function does"""
    widgets_with_pos = [w for w in widgets if isinstance(w, WithPos)]

    if not widgets_with_pos:
        raise AttributeError(f"No widget with position found among list {widgets}")

    first_widget = widgets_with_pos[0]
    pos_x = first_widget.posx
    pos_y = first_widget.posy
    print(f"Widget {first_widget} with position: {(pos_x, pos_y)}")

The following code (using the other sub-classes defined in the original question) passes MyPy :

w1 = Group([])
w2 = Rectangle(2, 3)
some_function_that_does_something([w1, w2])

---

Further reading

For reference, here are some of the links Alex included in his answer:

• Python documentation for typing.Protocol
• PEP 544 , introducing typing.Protocol and explaining the concept of structural subtyping.
• MyPy documentation for Protocol s and structural subtyping.