pure_interface

A Python interface library that disallows function body content on interfaces and supports adaption.

Jump to the Reference.

Features

• Prevents code in method bodies of an interface class
• Ensures that method overrides have compatible signatures
• Supports interface adaption.
• Supports optional structural type checking.
• Allows concrete implementations the flexibility to implement abstract properties as instance attributes.
• Interface.adapt() can return an implementation wrapper that provides only the attributes and methods defined by Interface.
• Supports python 3.8+

A note on the name

The phrase pure interface applies only to the first design goal - a class that defines only an interface with no implementation is a pure interface [*]. In every other respect the zen of 'practicality beats purity' applies.

Installation

You can install released versions of pure_interface using pip:

pip install pure-interface

or you can grab the source code from GitHub.

Defining an Interface

For simplicity in these examples we assume that the entire pure_interface namespace has been imported

from pure_interface import *

To define an interface, simply inherit from the class Interface and write a PEP-544 Protocol-like class leaving all method bodies empty:

class IAnimal(Interface):
    height: float

    def speak(self):
        pass

Like Protocols, class annotations are considered part of the interface. For historical reasons, you can also use the following alternate syntax:

class IAnimal(Interface):
    height = None

    def speak(self):
        pass

The value assigned to class attributes must be None and the attribute is removed from the class dictionary (since annotations are not in the class dictionary).

Interface is a subtype of abc.ABC and the abstractmethod, abstractclassmethod and abstractstaticmethod decorators work as expected. ABC-style property definitions are also supported (and equivalent):

class IAnimal(Interface):
    @property
    @abstractmethod
    def height(self):
        pass

    @abstractmethod
    def speak(self):
        pass

Again, the height property is removed from the class dictionary, but, as with the other syntaxes, all concrete subclasses will be required to have a height attribute.

Note that the abstractmethod decorator is optional as ALL methods and properties on a Interface subclass are abstract. All the examples above are equivalent, both height and speak are considered abstract and must be overridden by subclasses.

Including abstractmethod decorators in your code can be useful for reminding yourself (and telling your IDE) that you need to override those methods. Another common way of informing an IDE that a method needs to be overridden is for the method to raise NotImplementedError. For this reason methods that just raise NotImplementedError are also considered empty.

Interface classes cannot be instantiated

IAnimal()
InterfaceError: Interfaces cannot be instantiated.

Including code in a method will result in an InterfaceError being raised when the module is imported. For example:

class BadInterface(Interface):
    def method(self):
        print('hello')

InterfaceError: Function "method" is not empty

Mixing Interface with non-interface types in a bases list will raise an InterfaceError at module load time. There are two exceptions to this rule. typing.Generic is permitted as well as empty abc.ABC classes that only defines abstract methods and properties that satisfy the empty method criteria will result in a type that is considered a pure interface.:

class ABCInterface(abc.ABC):
    @abstractmethod
    def foo(self):
        pass

class MyInterface(ABCInterface, Interface):
    def bar(self):
        pass

The dir() function will include all interface attributes so that mock.Mock(spec=IAnimal) will work as expected:

>>> dir(IAnimal)
['__abstractmethods__', '__doc__', ..., 'height', 'speak']

The mock_protocol package also works well with interfaces.

Sub-Interfaces

Like Protocol, to specify a sub-interface you must specify the Interface class again in the base class list. Only classes that inherit directly from Interface will be considered an interface type.:

class IWeightyAnimal(IAnimal, Interface):
    weight: float

Concrete Implementations

Like Protocol, simply inherit from an interface class in the normal way and write a concrete class.:

class Animal(IAnimal):
    def __init__(self, height):
        self.height = height

    def speak(self):
        print('hello')

Concrete implementations may implement interface attributes in any way they like: as instance attributes, properties or custom descriptors, provided that they all exist at the end of __init__(). Here is another valid implementation:

class Animal(IAnimal):
    def __init__(self, height):
        self._height = height

    @property
    def height(self):
        return self._height

    def speak(self):
        print('hello')

Method Signatures

Method overrides are checked for compatibility with the interface. This means that argument names must match exactly and that no new non-optional arguments are present in the override. This enforces that calling the method with interface parameters will aways work. For example, given the interface method:

def speak(self, volume):

Then these overrides will all fail the checks and raise an InterfaceError:

def speak(self):  # too few parameters
def speak(self, loudness):  # name does not match
def speak(self, volume, language):  # extra required argument

However new optional parameters are permitted, as are *args and **kwargs:

def speak(self, volume, language='doggy speak')
def speak(self, *args, **kwargs)

Implementation Warnings

As with abc.ABC, the abstract method checking for a class is done when an object is instantiated. However it is useful to know about missing methods sooner than that. For this reason pure_interface will issue a warning during module import when methods are missing from a concrete subclass. For example:

class SilentAnimal(IAnimal):
    def __init__(self, height):
        self.height = height

will issue this warning:

readme.py:28: UserWarning: Incomplete Implementation: SilentAnimal does not implement speak
class SilentAnimal(IAnimal):

Trying to create a SilentAnimal will fail in the standard abc way:

SilentAnimal()
InterfaceError: Can't instantiate abstract class SilentAnimal with abstract methods speak

If you have a mixin class that implements part of an interface you can suppress the warnings by adding an class attribute called pi_partial_implementation. The value of the attribute is ignored, and the attribute itself is removed from the class. For example:

class HeightMixin(IAnimal):
    pi_partial_implementation = True

    def __init__(self, height):
        self.height = height

will not issue any warnings.

The warning messages are also stored irrespective of any warning module filters (but only if get_is_development() returns True). The existence of warnings can be tested with waringing messages can be fetched using get_missing_method_warnings This provides an alternative to raising warnings as errors. When all your imports are complete you can check if this list is empty.:

if warnings := pure_iterface.get_missing_method_warnings():
    for warning in warnings:
        print(warning)
    exit(1)

Note that missing properties are NOT checked for as they may be provided by instance attributes.

Interface Subsets

Sometimes your code only uses a small part of a large interface. It can be useful (eg. for test mocking) to specify the sub part of the interface that your code requires. This can be done with the sub_interface_of decorator.:

@sub_interface_of(IAnimal)
class IHeight(Interface):
    height: float

def my_code(h: IHeight):
    return "That's tall" if h.height > 100 else "Not so tall"

The sub_interface_of decorator checks that the attributes and methods of the smaller interface match the larger interface. If the larger interface is changed and no longer matches the smaller interface then InterfaceError is raised during import. Function signatures must match exactly (not just be compatible). The decorator will also register the larger interface as a sub-type of the smaller interface (using abc.register) so that isinstance(Animal(), IHeight) returns True.

Adaption

Registering Adapters

Adapters for an interface are registered with the adapts decorator or with the register_adapter function. Take for example an interface ISpeaker and a class Talker and an adapter class TalkerToSpeaker:

class ISpeaker(Interface):
    def speak(self):
        pass

class Talker(object):
    def talk(self):
        return 'talk'

@adapts(Talker)
class TalkerToSpeaker(ISpeaker):
    def __init__(self, talker):
        self._talker = talker

    def speak(self):
        return self._talker.talk()

The adapts decorator call above is equivalent to:

register_adapter(TalkerToSpeaker, Talker, ISpeaker)

The ISpeaker parameter passed to register_adapter is the first interface in the MRO of the class being decorated (TalkerToSpeaker). If there are no interface types in the MRO of the decorated class an InterfaceError exception is raised.

Adapter factory functions can be decorated too, in which case the interface being adapted to needs to be specified:

@adapts(Talker, ISpeaker)
def talker_to_speaker(talker):
    return TalkerToSpeaker(talker)

The decorated adapter (whether class for function) must be callable with a single parameter - the object to adapt.

Adapting Objects

The Interface.adapt method will adapt an object to the given interface such that Interface.provided_by is True or raise AdaptionError if no adapter could be found. For example:

speaker = ISpeaker.adapt(talker)
isinstance(speaker, ISpeaker)  --> True

If you want to get None rather than an exception then use:

speaker = ISpeaker.adapt_or_none(talker)

You can filter a list of objects returning those objects that provide an interface using filter_adapt(objects):

list(ISpeaker.filter_adapt([None, Talker(), a_speaker, 'text']) --> [TalkerToSpeaker, a_speaker]

To adapt an object only if it is not None then use:

ISpeaker.optional_adapt(optional_talker)

This is equivalent to:

ISpeaker.adapt(optional_talker) if optional_talker is not None else None

By default the adaption functions will return an object which provides only the functions and properties specified by the interface. For example given the following implementation of the ISpeaker interface above:

class TopicSpeaker(ISpeaker):
    def __init__(self, topic):
        self.topic = topic

    def speak(self):
        return 'lets talk about {}'.format(self.topic)

topic_speaker = TopicSpeaker('python')

Then:

speaker = ISpeaker.adapt(topic_speaker)
speaker is topic_speaker  --> False
speaker.topic --> AttributeError("ISpeaker interface has no attribute topic")

This is controlled by the optional interface_only parameter to adapt which defaults to True. Pass interface_only=False if you want the actual adapted object rather than a wrapper:

speaker = ISpeaker.adapt(topic_speaker, interface_only=False)
speaker is topic_speaker  --> True
speaker.topic --> 'Python'

Accessing the topic attribute on an ISpeaker may work for all current implementations of ISpeaker, but this code will likely break at some inconvenient time in the future.

Adapters from sub-interfaces may be used to perform adaption if necessary. For example:

class IA(Interface):
   foo = None

class IB(IA, Interface):
    bar = None

@adapts(int):
class IntToB(IB):
    def __init__(self, x):
        self.foo = self.bar = x

Then IA.adapt(4) will use the IntToB adapter to adapt 4 to IA (unless there is already an adapter from int to IA)

Further, if an interface is decorated with sub_interface_of, adapters for the larger interface will be used if a direct adapter is not found.

Structural Type Checking

Structural type checking checks if an object has the attributes and methods defined by the interface.

As interfaces are inherited, you can usually use isinstance(obj, MyInterface) to check if an interface is provided. An alternative to isinstance() is the Interface.provided_by(obj) classmethod which will fall back to structural type checking if the instance is not an actual subclass. The structural type-checking does not check function signatures. Pure interface is stricter than a runtime_checkable decorated Protocol in that it differentiates between attributes and methods.:

class Parrot(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self._height = 43

    @property
    def height(self):
        return self._height

    def speak(self):
        print('hello')

p = Parrot()
isinstance(p, IAnimal) --> False
IAnimal.provided_by(p) --> True

The structural type checking makes working with data transfer objects (DTO's) much easier.:

class IMyDataType(Interface):
    thing: str

class DTO(object):
    pass

d = DTO()
d.thing = 'hello'
IMyDataType.provided_by(d) --> True
e = DTO()
e.something_else = True
IMyDataType.provided_by(e) --> False

Adaption also supports structural typing by passing allow_implicit=True (but this is not the default):

speaker = ISpeaker.adapt(Parrot(), allow_implicit=True)
ISpeaker.provided_by(speaker)  --> True

When using adapt() with allow_implicit=True, a warning may be issued informing you that the structurally typed object should inherit the interface. The warning is only issued if the interface is implemented by the class (and not by instance attributes as in the DTO case above) and the warning is only issued once for each class, interface pair. For example:

s = ISpeaker.adapt(Parrot(), allow_implicit=True)
UserWarning: Class Parrot implements ISpeaker.
Consider inheriting ISpeaker or using ISpeaker.register(Parrot)

This warning is issued because provided_by first does an isinstance check and will be faster in this situation.

Dataclass Support

Interfaces can be decorated with the standard library dataclasses.dataclass decorator. This will create a dataclass that implements an interface. For example:

class IAnimal2(Interface):
    height: float
    species: str

    def speak(self):
        pass

@dataclasses.dataclass
class Animal2(IAnimal2):
    def speak(self):
        print('Hello, I am a {} metre tall {}', self.height, self.species)

a = Animal2(height=4.5, species='Giraffe')

This is done by populating the __annotations__ attribute of all interfaces and all direct interface sub-classes with the interface attribute names of the class. Annotation entries are not created for attributes that already exist on the class. For example:

@dataclasses.dataclass
class FixedHeightAnimal(IAnimal2):
    @property
    def height(self):
        return 12.3

    def speak(self):
        print('Hello, I am a 12.3 metre tall {}', self.height, self.species)

a = FixedHeightAnimal(species='Dinosaur')

Because height exists in the class definition, the height attribute is not added to the __annotations__ attribute of FixedHeightAnimal and it is ignored by the dataclass decorator.

Interface Type Information

The pure_interface module provides these functions for returning information about interface types.

type_is_interface(cls)

Return True if cls is a pure interface, False otherwise or if cls is not a class.

get_type_interfaces(cls)

Returns all interfaces in the cls mro including cls itself if it is an interface

get_interface_names(cls)

Returns a frozenset of names (methods and attributes) defined by the interface. If interface is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned.

get_interface_method_names(interface)

Returns a frozenset of names of methods defined by the interface. If interface is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned

get_interface_attribute_names(interface)

Returns a frozenset of names of attributes defined by the interface. If interface is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned

Automatic Adaption

The function decorator adapt_args adapts arguments to a decorated function to the types given. For example:

@adapt_args(foo=IFoo, bar=IBar)
def my_func(foo, bar=None):
    pass

The types can also be taken from the argument annotations.:

@adapt_args
def my_func(foo: IFoo, bar: IBar | None = None):
    pass

This would adapt the foo parameter to IFoo (with IFoo.optional_adapt(foo)) and bar to IBar (using ``IBar.optional_adapt(bar)) before passing them to my_func. None values are never adapted, so my_func(foo, None) will work, otherwise AdaptionError is raised if the parameter is not adaptable. All arguments to adapt_args must be specified as keyword arguments:

@adapt_args(IFoo, IBar)   # NOT ALLOWED
def other_func(foo, bar):
    pass

Delegation and Composition

Sometimes when adapting objects to an interface the adapter has to route attributes and methods to another object. the Delegate class assists with this task reducing boiler plate code such as:

def method(self):
    return self.impl.method()

The Delegate class provides 3 special attributes to route attributes to a child object. Only attributes and mothods not defined on the class (or super-classes) are routed. (Attributes and methods defined on an interface sub-class are not considered part of the implementation and these attributes are routed.) Any one or combination of attributes is allowed.

pi_attr_delegates

pi_attr_delegates is a dictionary mapping the attribute name of the delegate to either an interface or a list of attribute names to delegate. If an interface is given then the list returned by get_interface_names() is used for the attribute names to route to the delegate object. For example suppose we want to extend an Animal with a new method price:

class ExtendedAnimal(Delegate, IAnimal):
    pi_attr_delegates = {'a': IAnimal}

    def __init__(self, a):
        self.a

    def price(self):
        return 'lots'

a = Animal(5)
ea = ExtendedAnimal(a)

ea.height -> 5  # height is in IAnimal and routed to 'ea.a.height'
ea.speak() -> 'hello'  # speak is in IAnimal and routed to 'ea.a.speak()'
ea.price() -> 'lots'

The following code is equivalent but won't update with changes to IAnimal:

class ExtendedAnimal(Delegate):
    pi_attr_delegates = {'a': ['height', 'speak']}

    def __init__(self, a):
        self.a
    ...

pi_attr_mapping

The above works when the attribute names match. When they don't, you can use the pi_attr_mapping special attribute. pi_attr_mapping takes the reverse approach, the key is the attribute and the value is a dotted name of how to route the lookup. This provides a lot of flexibility as any number of dots are permitted. This example is again equivalent to the first Delegate:

class ExtendedAnimal(Delegate):
    pi_attr_mapping = {'height': 'a.height',
                       'talk': 'a.talk'}

    def __init__(self, a):
        self.a

    def price(self):
        return 'lots'

pi_attr_fallback

pi_attr_fallback, if not None, is treated a delegate for all attributes defined by base interfaces of the class if there is no delegate, mapping or implementation for that attribute. Again, this is equivalent to the first Delegate.:

class ExtendedAnimal(Delegate, IAnimal):
    pi_attr_fallback = 'a'

    def __init__(self, a):
        self.a

    def price(self):
        return 'lots'

Note that method and attribute names for all interface classes in ExtendAnimal.mro() are routed to a. Methods and properties defined on the delegating class itself take precedence (as one would expect):

class MyDelegate(Delegate, IAnimal):
    pi_attr_delegates = {'impl': IAnimal}

    def __init__(self, impl):
        self.impl = impl

    @property
    def height(self):
        return 10

    def speak(self):
        return 'I speak on behalf of the animal'

d = MyDelegate(a)
d.height -> 10  # height defined on MyDelegate
d.speak() -> 'I speak on behalf of the animal'  # speak is defined on MyDelegate

However, attempting to set an instance attribute as an override will just set the attribute on the underlying delegate instead. If you want to override an interface attribute using an instance attribute, first define it as a class attribute:

class MyDelegate(Delegate, IAnimal):
    pi_attr_delegates = {'impl': IAnimal}
    height = None  # prevents delegation of height to `impl`

    def __init__(self, impl):
        self.impl = impl
        self.height = 10

If you supply more than one delegation rule (e.g. both pi_attr_mapping and pi_attr_fallack) then

pi_attr_delegates delegation rules have priority over pi_attr_mapping delegation rules which have priority over pi_attr_fallback.

Type Composition

A special case where all delegated attributes are defined in an Interface is handled by the composed_type factory function. composed_type takes 2 or more interfaces and returns a new type that inherits from all the interfaces with a constructor that takes instances that implement those interfaces (in the same order). For exmaple:

AT = composed_type(IAnimal, ITalker)

a = Animal(5)
t = Talker()
a_t = AT(a, t)

a_t.height
a_t.talk

# AT(t, a) -> ValueError - arguments in wrong order.

If the same arguments are passed to composed_type again the same type is returned. For example:

AT = composed_type(IAnimal, ITalker)
AT2 = composed_type(IAnimal, ITalker)

AT is AT2 -> True

If the interfaces share method or attribute names, then the attribute is routed to the first encountered interface. For example:

class Speaker(ISpeaker):
    def speak(self):
        return 'speaker speak'

SA = composed_type(ISpeaker, IAnimal)
s = Speaker()
a = Animal(5)

sa = SA(s, a)
sa.speak(3) -> 'speaker speak'  # from s.speak

Types created with composed_type are Delegate subclasses with a provided_by method which returns True if the argument provides all the interfaces in the type (even if the argument is not a Delegate subclasses).:

AT = composed_type(IAnimal, ITalker)
TA = composed_type(ITalker, IAnimal)

a_t = AT(Animal(5), Talker())

isinstance(a_t, AT) -> True
isinstance(a_t, TA) -> False
AT.provided_by(a_t) -> True
TA.provided_by(a_t) -> True

class X(IAnimal, ITalker):
    ...

AT.provided_by(X()) -> True
TA.provided_by(X()) -> True

MyPy

pure_interface does some things that mypy does not understand. For example mypy does not understand that all methods in an interface are abstract and will complain about incorrect return types. For this reason pure_interface has a mypy plugin. Unfortunately this plugin does not completely cover all the capabilities of pure_interface and some # type: ignore comments will be required to get a clean mypy run.

To use the pure_interface plugin add the following to your mypy configuration file.:

[mypy]
plugins = pure_interface.mypy_plugin

Or your pyproject.toml file:

[tool.mypy]
plugins = "pure_interface.mypy_plugin"

Development Flag

Much of the empty function and other checking is awesome whilst writing your code but ultimately slows down production code. For this reason the pure_interface module has an is_development switch with accessor functions.:

get_is_development()
set_is_development(is_dev)

is_development defaults to True if running from source and defaults to False if bundled into an executable by py2exe, cx_Freeze or similar tools.

If you call set_is_development to change this flag it must be set before modules using the Interface type are imported or else the change will not have any effect.

If is_development is False then:

• Signatures of overriding methods are not checked
• No warnings are issued by the adaption functions
• No incomplete implementation warnings are issued
• The default value of interface_only is set to False, so that interface wrappers are not created.

Reference

Classes

InterfaceType(abc.ABCMeta)

Metaclass for checking interface and implementation classes. Adding InterfaceType as a meta-class to a class will not make that class an interface, you need to inherit from Interface class to define an interface.

In addition to the register method provided by ABCMeta, the following functions are defined on InterfaceType and can be accessed directly when the Interface methods are overridden for other purposes.

adapt (cls, obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

See Interface.adapt for a description.

adapt_or_none (cls, obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

See Interface.adapt_or_none for a description

optional_adapt (cls, obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

See Interface.optional_adapt for a description

can_adapt (cls, obj, allow_implicit=False)

See Interface.can_adapt for a description

filter_adapt (cls, objects, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

See Interface.filter_adapt for a description

interface_only (cls, implementation)

See Interface.interface_only for a description

provided_by (cls, obj, allow_implicit=True)

See Interface.provided_by for a description

Classes created with a metaclass of InterfaceType will have the following property:

_pi

This contains information about the class that is used by this meta-class. This attribute is reserved for use by pure_interface and must not be overridden.

Interface

Base class for defining interfaces. The following methods are provided:

adapt (obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

Adapts obj to this interface. If allow_implicit is True permit structural adaptions. If interface_only is None the it is set to the value of is_development. If interface_only resolves to True a wrapper object that provides the properties and methods defined by the interface and nothing else is returned. Raises AdaptionError if no adaption is possible or a registered adapter returns an object not providing this interface.

adapt_or_none (obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

As per adapt() except returns None instead of raising a AdaptionError

optional_adapt (obj, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

Adapts obj to this interface if it is not None returning None otherwise. Short-cut for adapt(obj) if obj is not None else None

can_adapt (obj, allow_implicit=False)

Returns True if adapt(obj, allow_implicit) will succeed. Short-cut for adapt_or_none(obj) is not None

filter_adapt (objects, allow_implicit=False, interface_only=None)

Generates adaptions of each item in objects that provide this interface. allow_implicit and interface_only are as for adapt. Objects that cannot be adapted to this interface are silently skipped.

interface_only (implementation)

Returns a wrapper around implementation that provides the properties and methods defined by the interface and nothing else.

provided_by (obj)

Returns True if obj provides this interface (either by inheritance or structurally).

Delegate

Helper class for delegating attribute access to one or more objects. Attribute delegation is defined by using one or more special call attributes pi_attr_delegates, pi_attr_mapping or pi_attr_fallback.

pi_attr_delegates

A dictionary mapping implementation attribute to either a list of attributes to delegate to that implementation, or an Interface subclass. If an Interface subclass is specifed the names returned by get_interface_names are used instead. For example:

pi_attr_delegates = {'_impl': ['foo', 'bar']}

creates implmentations of obj.foo as obj._impl.foo and obj.bar as obj._impl.bar.

pi_attr_mapping

A dictionary mapping attribute name to dotted lookup path. Use this if the exposed attribute does not match the attribute name on the delegatee or if multiple levels of indirection are requried. For example:

pi_attr_mapping = {'foo': '_impl.x',
                   'bar': '_impl.z.y'}

creates implmentations of obj.foo as obj._impl.x and obj.bar as obj._impl.z.y.

pi_attr_fallback

When a delegate class implements an interface (or interfaces), pi_attr_fallback may be used to specify the name the implementation attribute for all attributes not otherwise defined on the class or by the methods above. For example:

class MyDelgate(Delegate, IAnimal):
    pi_attr_fallback = 'impl'

    def __init__(self, animal):
        self.impl = animal

If the delegate does not inherit from an interface then pi_attr_fallback does nothing.

provided_by (obj)

Interface.provided_by equivalent for delegates created by composed_type. It returns True if obj provides all the interfaces in the composed type and False otherwise.

Functions

adapts (from_type, to_interface=None)

Class or function decorator for declaring an adapter from from_type to to_interface. The class or function being decorated must take a single argument (an instance of from_type) and provide (or return and object providing) to_interface. The adapter may return an object that provides the interface structurally only, however adapt must be called with allow_implicit=True for this to work. If decorating a class, to_interface may be None to use the first interface in the class's MRO.

register_adapter (adapter, from_type, to_interface)

Registers an adapter to convert instances of from_type to objects that provide to_interface for the to_interface.adapt() method. adapter must be a callable that takes a single argument (an instance of from_type) and returns and object providing to_interface.

type_is_interface (cls)

Return True if cls is a pure interface and False otherwise

get_type_interfaces (cls)

Returns all interfaces in the cls mro including cls itself if it is an interface

get_interface_names (cls)

Returns a frozenset of names (methods and attributes) defined by the interface. if interface is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned.

get_interface_method_names (cls)

Returns a frozenset of names of methods defined by the interface. If cls is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned.

get_interface_attribute_names (cls)

Returns a frozenset of names of class attributes and annotations defined by the interface If cls is not a Interface subtype then an empty set is returned.

dataclass (...)

This function is a re-implementation of the standard Python dataclasses.dataclass decorator. In addition to the fields on the decorated class, all annotations on interface base classes are added as fields. See the Python dataclasses documentation for details on the arguments, they are exactly the same.

get_is_development()

Returns the current value of the "is development" flag.

set_is_devlopment (is_dev)

Set to True to enable all checks and warnings. If set to False then:

• Signatures of overriding methods are not checked
• No warnings are issued by the adaption functions
• No incomplete implementation warnings are issued
• The default value of interface_only is set to False, so that interface wrappers are not created.

get_missing_method_warnings ()

The list of warning messages for concrete classes with missing interface (abstract) method overrides. Note that missing properties are NOT checked for as they may be provided by instance attributes.

composed_type (*interface_types)

Type factory function that creates a Delegate subclass that implements all the interfaces via delegates.

Exceptions

PureInterfaceError

Base exception class for all exceptions raised by pure_interface.

InterfaceError

Exception raised for problems with interfaces

AdaptionError

Exception raised for problems with adapters or adapting.

---

[*]	We don't talk about the methods on the base Interface class. In earlier versions they were all on the meta class but then practicality (mainly type-hinting) got in the way.