Typing and validation

Adding type hints with Generics¤

New in version 0.92

The Component class optionally accepts type parameters that allow you to specify the types of args, kwargs, slots, and data:

class Button(Component[Args, Kwargs, Slots, Data, JsData, CssData]):
    ...

Args - Must be a Tuple or Any
Kwargs - Must be a TypedDict or Any
Data - Must be a TypedDict or Any
Slots - Must be a TypedDict or Any

Here's a full example:

from typing import NotRequired, Tuple, TypedDict, SlotContent, SlotFunc

# Positional inputs
Args = Tuple[int, str]

# Kwargs inputs
class Kwargs(TypedDict):
    variable: str
    another: int
    maybe_var: NotRequired[int] # May be ommited

# Data returned from `get_context_data`
class Data(TypedDict):
    variable: str

# The data available to the `my_slot` scoped slot
class MySlotData(TypedDict):
    value: int

# Slots
class Slots(TypedDict):
    # Use SlotFunc for slot functions.
    # The generic specifies the `data` dictionary
    my_slot: NotRequired[SlotFunc[MySlotData]]
    # SlotContent == Union[str, SafeString]
    another_slot: SlotContent

class Button(Component[Args, Kwargs, Slots, Data, JsData, CssData]):
    def get_context_data(self, variable, another):
        return {
            "variable": variable,
        }

When you then call Component.render or Component.render_to_response, you will get type hints:

Button.render(
    # Error: First arg must be `int`, got `float`
    args=(1.25, "abc"),
    # Error: Key "another" is missing
    kwargs={
        "variable": "text",
    },
)

Usage for Python <3.11¤

On Python 3.8-3.10, use typing_extensions

from typing_extensions import TypedDict, NotRequired

Additionally on Python 3.8-3.9, also import annotations:

from __future__ import annotations

Moreover, on 3.10 and less, you may not be able to use NotRequired, and instead you will need to mark either all keys are required, or all keys as optional, using TypeDict's total kwarg.

See PEP-655 for more info.

Passing additional args or kwargs¤

You may have a function that supports any number of args or kwargs:

def get_context_data(self, *args, **kwargs):
    ...

This is not supported with the typed components.

As a workaround:

For *args, set a positional argument that accepts a list of values:

# Tuple of one member of list of strings
Args = Tuple[List[str]]

For *kwargs, set a keyword argument that accepts a dictionary of values:

class Kwargs(TypedDict):
    variable: str
    another: int
    # Pass any extra keys under `extra`
    extra: Dict[str, any]

Handling no args or no kwargs¤

To declare that a component accepts no Args, Kwargs, etc, you can use EmptyTuple and EmptyDict types:

from django_components import Component, EmptyDict, EmptyTuple

Args = EmptyTuple
Kwargs = Data = Slots = EmptyDict

class Button(Component[Args, Kwargs, Slots, Data, JsData, CssData]):
    ...

Runtime input validation with types¤

New in version 0.96

NOTE: Kwargs, slots, and data validation is supported only for Python >=3.11

In Python 3.11 and later, when you specify the component types, you will get also runtime validation of the inputs you pass to Component.render or Component.render_to_response.

So, using the example from before, if you ignored the type errors and still ran the following code:

Button.render(
    # Error: First arg must be `int`, got `float`
    args=(1.25, "abc"),
    # Error: Key "another" is missing
    kwargs={
        "variable": "text",
    },
)

This would raise a TypeError:

Component 'Button' expected positional argument at index 0 to be <class 'int'>, got 1.25 of type <class 'float'>

In case you need to skip these errors, you can either set the faulty member to Any, e.g.:

# Changed `int` to `Any`
Args = Tuple[Any, str]

Or you can replace Args with Any altogether, to skip the validation of args:

# Replaced `Args` with `Any`
class Button(Component[Any, Kwargs, Slots, Data, JsData, CssData]):
    ...

Same applies to kwargs, data, and slots.