I’m trying to split my huge class into two; well, basically into the “main” class and a mixin with additional functions, like so:
main.py
file:
import mymixin.py class Main(object, MyMixin): def func1(self, xxx): ...
mymixin.py
file:
class MyMixin(object): def func2(self: Main, xxx): # <--- note the type hint ...
Now, while this works just fine, the type hint in MyMixin.func2
of course can’t work. I can’t import main.py
, because I’d get a cyclic import and without the hint, my editor (PyCharm) can’t tell what self
is.
I’m using Python 3.4, but I’m willing to move to 3.5 if a solution is available there.
Is there any way I can split my class into two files and keep all the “connections” so that my IDE still offers me auto-completion and all the other goodies that come from it knowing the types?
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Answer
There isn’t a hugely elegant way to handle import cycles in general, I’m afraid. Your choices are to either redesign your code to remove the cyclic dependency, or if it isn’t feasible, do something like this:
# some_file.py from typing import TYPE_CHECKING if TYPE_CHECKING: from main import Main class MyObject(object): def func2(self, some_param: 'Main'): ...
The TYPE_CHECKING
constant is always False
at runtime, so the import won’t be evaluated, but mypy (and other type-checking tools) will evaluate the contents of that block.
We also need to make the Main
type annotation into a string, effectively forward declaring it since the Main
symbol isn’t available at runtime.
If you are using Python 3.7+, we can at least skip having to provide an explicit string annotation by taking advantage of PEP 563:
# some_file.py from __future__ import annotations from typing import TYPE_CHECKING if TYPE_CHECKING: from main import Main class MyObject(object): # Hooray, cleaner annotations! def func2(self, some_param: Main): ...
The from __future__ import annotations
import will make all type hints be strings and skip evaluating them. This can help make our code here mildly more ergonomic.
All that said, using mixins with mypy will likely require a bit more structure then you currently have. Mypy recommends an approach that’s basically what deceze
is describing — to create an ABC that both your Main
and MyMixin
classes inherit. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up needing to do something similar in order to make Pycharm’s checker happy.