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PyPI version Supported Python Wheel

Important note

  • Since 2024.08.07, each release will contain multiple builds; besides normal version, there is an alternative build suitable for multiple XML element subclassing. Please check out relevant Installation section for detail (hint: many people don't need to bother with this). Also note that this release requires mypy 1.11 if one chooses to use mypy for type checking. pyright version requirement (1.1.351) is not changed.

Introduction

This repository contains external type annotations for lxml. It can be used by type-checking tools (currently supporting pyright and mypy) to check code that uses lxml, or used within IDEs like VSCode to facilitate development.

Goal ① : Completion

Now the coverage of lxml submodules is complete (unless intentionally rejected, see further below), thus no more considered as partial:

  • lxml.etree
  • lxml.html
    • lxml.html.builder
    • lxml.html.clean (already removed in lxml 5.2.0, this project will follow suite in future)
    • lxml.html.diff
    • lxml.html.html5parser
    • lxml.html.soupparser
  • lxml.isoschematron
  • lxml.objectify
  • lxml.builder
  • lxml.cssselect
  • lxml.sax
  • lxml.ElementInclude

Following submodules will not be implemented due to irrelevance to type checking or other reasons:

  • lxml.etree.Schematron (obsolete and superseded by lxml.isoschematron)
  • lxml.usedoctest
  • lxml.html.usedoctest
  • lxml.html.formfill (shouldn't have existed, this would belong to HTTP libraries like requests or httpx)

Check out project page for future plans and progress.

Goal ② : Support multiple type checkers

Currently the annotations are validated for both pyright and mypy, with pyright recommended because of its greater flexibility and early adoption of newer type checking features.

In the future, there is plan to bring even more type checker support.

Goal ③: Review and test suite

  • All prior lxml-stubs contributions are reviewed thoroughly, bringing coherency of annotation across the whole package
  • Perform runtime check, and compare against static type checker result; this guarantees annotations are indeed working in real world, not just within some cooked up test suite
  • Existing static test suite already vastly expanded, and is under progress of migrating to runtime test
  • Modernize package building infrastructure

Goal ④ : Support for IDEs

Despite having no official PEP, some IDEs support showing docstring from external annotations. This package tries to bring type annotation specific docstrings for some lxml classes and functions, explaining how they can be used. Following screenshots show what would look like in Visual Studio Code, behaving as if docstrings come from real python code:

Stub docstring in VSCode mouseover tooltip

Besides docstring, current annotations are geared towards convenience for code writers instead of absolute logical 'correctness'. The deviation of class inheritance for HtmlComment and friends is one prominent example.

Installation

The normal choice for most people is to fetch package from PyPI via pip:

pip install -U types-lxml

In the unlikely case PyPI is down, one can directly download wheel from latest release in GitHub, and then perform installation as local file:

pip install -U types-lxml*.whl

Or directly run bleeding edge version from GitHub repository:

pip install -U git+https://github.com/abelcheung/types-lxml.git

Choosing the build

Since 2024.08.07 release, there will be two versions of types-lxml. First one is the default one; if there's no problem using it, there's no need to switch.

The second version, types-lxml-multi-subclass, is intended for specific need, namely creation of multiple lxml element subclasses. For example:

  graph TD;
      etree.ElementBase-->MyBaseElement;
      MyBaseElement-->MySubElement1;
      MyBaseElement-->MySubElement2;
Loading

If a parsed or constructed element tree consists of single type of element nodes, it is safe to assume the children or parent of a node are of the same type too. But this assumption does not hold for multiple subclasses. Using diagram above as example, we can only deduce the children and parent type is MyBaseElement (or any of its subclasses). The 2 paradigms can't coexist within a single type annotation package. See bug #51 that illustrated why multiple build is necessary.

Remember that anybody can only choose one of the 2 builds. It is impossible to install both, as pip just arbitrarily overwrite conflicting files with one another. If in doubt, removing existing package first, then install the one you needed.

History

Type annotations for lxml were initially included in typeshed, but as it was still incomplete at that time, the stubs are ripped out as a separate project. The code was since then under governance of lxml, until 2022 when this fork intended to revamp lxml-stubs completely and emerge into separate project.

types-lxml is a fork of lxml-stubs that strives for the goals described above, so that most people would find it more useful.