Type hinting in Python 2

Question

In PEP 484, type hinting was added to Python 3 with the inclusion of the typing module. Is there any way to do this in Python 2? All I can think of is having a decorator to

Answer 1

Here is a function i wrote to parse the Python 2 type comment and get a tuple of input types and the return type. It would need some work to work with complex type definitions from the typing library (Any, Optional, List, etc.):

class InvalidTypeHint(Exception):
    pass    

PYTHON_2_TYPE_HINT_REGEX = "\s*#\s*type:\s*(\(.+\))\s*->\s*(.+)\s*"

def parse_python_2_type_hint(typehint_string):
    # type: (str) -> (tuple, type)
    pattern = re.compile(PYTHON_2_TYPE_HINT_REGEX)
    search_results = pattern.search(typehint_string)
    if not search_results:
        raise InvalidTypeHint('%s does not match type hint spec regex %s' % (typehint_string, PYTHON_2_TYPE_HINT_REGEX))
    arg_types_str = search_results.group(1)
    return_type_str = search_results.group(2)
    try:
        arg_types_tuple = eval(arg_types_str)
        assert isinstance(arg_types_tuple, tuple)
        return_type = eval(return_type_str)
        assert isinstance(return_type, type)
    except Exception as e:
        raise InvalidTypeHint(e)
    return arg_types_tuple, return_type


def parse_arg_types_for_callable(func):
    # type:(callable)->tuple
    """

    :param func:
    :return: list of parameter types if successfully parsed, else None
    """

    # todo make this compatible with python 3 type hints
    # python 2.7 type hint
    source_lines = inspect.getsource(func).split("\n")
    def_statements = 0
    for source_line in source_lines:
        try:
            arg_types_tuple, return_type = parse_python_2_type_hint(source_line)
            return arg_types_tuple
        except InvalidTypeHint:
            if source_line.strip().startswith("def "):
                def_statements += 1
            if def_statements > 1:
                return None