typin README

typin is a Type Inferencer for understanding what types of objects are flowing through your Python code. It observes your code dynamically and can record all the types that each function sees, returns or raises. typin can then use this information to create Python’s type annotations or __doc__ strings to insert into your code.

typin is currently proof-of-concept and a very early prototype. It is Python 3 only at the moment. There is a forthcoming project https://github.com/paulross/pytest-typin which turns typin into a pytest plugin so that your unit tests can generate type annotations and documentation strings.

Example

Lets say you have a function that creates a repeated string, like this:

def function(s, num):
    if num < 1:
        raise ValueError('Value must be > 0, not {:d}'.format(num))
    lst = []
    while num:
        lst.append(s)
        num -= 1
    return ' '.join(lst)

You can exercise this under the watchful gaze of typin:

from typin import type_inferencer

with type_inferencer.TypeInferencer() as ti:
    assert function('Hi', 2) == 'Hi Hi'

You can then get the types that typin has observed as a string suitable for a stub file:

ti.stub_file_str(__file__, '', 'function')
# returns: 'def function(s: str, num: int) -> str: ...'

Then adding code that provokes the exception we can track that as well:

from typin import type_inferencer

with type_inferencer.TypeInferencer() as ti:
    assert function('Hi', 2) == 'Hi Hi' # As before
    try:
        function('Hi', 0)
    except ValueError:
        pass

Exception specifications are not part of Python’s type annotation but they are part of of the Sphinx documentation string standard and typin can provide that, and the line number where it should be inserted:

line_number, docstring = ti.docstring(__file__, '', 'function', style='sphinx')
docstring
"""
<insert documentation for function>

:param s: <insert documentation for argument>
:type s: ``str``

:param num: <insert documentation for argument>
:type num: ``int``

:returns: ``str`` -- <insert documentation for return values>

:raises: ``ValueError``
"""
# Insert template docstrings into the source code.
new_src = ti.insert_docstrings(__file__, style='sphinx')
with open(__file__, 'w') as f:
    for line in new_src:
        f.write(line)

Sadly typin is not smart enough to write the documentation text for you :-)

There is a CLI interface typin_cli that is an entry point to typin/src/typin/typin_cli.py. This executes arbitrary python code using compile() and exec() like the following example. Note use of -- followed by Python script then the arguments for that script surrounded by quotes:

$ python typin_cli.py --stubs=stubs/ --write-docstrings=docstrings/ -- example.py 'foo bar baz'

This will compile()/exec() example.py with the arguments foo bar baz write the stub files ('.pyi' files) to stubs/ and the source code with the docstrings inserted to docstrings/.

typin_cli.py help:

$ python typin_cli.py --help
usage: typin_cli.py [-h] [-l LOGLEVEL] [-d] [-t] [-e EVENTS_TO_TRACE]
                    [-s STUBS] [-w WRITE_DOCSTRINGS]
                    [--docstring-style DOCSTRING_STYLE] [-r ROOT]
                    program argstring

typin_cli - Infer types of Python functions.
  Created by Paul Ross on 2017-10-25. Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.
  Version: v0.1.0 Licensed under MIT License
USAGE

positional arguments:
  program               Python target file to be compiled and executed.
  argstring             Argument as a string to give to the target. Prefix
                        this with '--' to avoid them getting consumed by
                        typin_cli.py

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l LOGLEVEL, --loglevel LOGLEVEL
                        Log Level (debug=10, info=20, warning=30, error=40,
                        critical=50) [default: 30]
  -d, --dump            Dump results on stdout after processing. [default:
                        False]
  -t, --trace-frame-events
                        Very verbose trace output, one line per frame event.
                        [default: False]
  -e EVENTS_TO_TRACE, --events-to-trace EVENTS_TO_TRACE
                        Events to trace (additive). [default: []] i.e. every
                        event.
  -s STUBS, --stubs STUBS
                        Directory to write stubs files. [default: ]
  -w WRITE_DOCSTRINGS, --write-docstrings WRITE_DOCSTRINGS
                        Directory to write source code with docstrings.
                        [default: ]
  --docstring-style DOCSTRING_STYLE
                        Style of docstrings, can be: 'google', 'sphinx'.
                        [default: sphinx]
  -r ROOT, --root ROOT  Root path of the Python packages to generate stub
                        files for. [default: .]

Python type inferencing.

• Free software: MIT license
• Documentation: https://typin.readthedocs.io.

Features

• TODO

Credits

This package was created with Cookiecutter and the audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage project template.