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Cover omit_defaults handling in asdict and to_builtins documentation #778

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ncoghlan opened this issue Dec 3, 2024 · 2 comments · May be fixed by #780
Open

Cover omit_defaults handling in asdict and to_builtins documentation #778

ncoghlan opened this issue Dec 3, 2024 · 2 comments · May be fixed by #780

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@ncoghlan
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ncoghlan commented Dec 3, 2024

Description

(I'm not sure if this is a bug report or a feature request, so I opted for a feature request in case the current behaviour is intentional)

I am using msgspec to help communicate with a server where a boolean field can be set to None in the data model not because null is a valid value, but because it is permitted to omit the key entirely. The relevant struct has omit_defaults=True set accordingly.

However, msgspec isn't handling the full message serialisation (httpx is doing that), so I attempted to use asdict to generate the message spec portion of the message.

This failed, as asdict includes all fields, without paying attention to omit_defaults.
@ncoghlan ncoghlan mentioned this issue Dec 3, 2024
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@ncoghlan ncoghlan changed the title asdict should respect omit_defaults Feature: add alternative API to asdict that respects omit_defaults Dec 5, 2024
@ncoghlan ncoghlan changed the title Feature: add alternative API to asdict that respects omit_defaults Cover omit_defaults handling in asdict and to_builtins documentation Dec 5, 2024
@ncoghlan
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ncoghlan commented Dec 5, 2024 •
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After exploring the docs further, I discovered that the "recursively convert to builtin types, while respecting omit_defaults" API exists: it is to_builtins.

Neither msgspec.struct.asdict nor msgspec.to_builtins mention omit_defaults in their documentation, so even though they have "See also" links to each other, it isn't clear why you might choose one over the other. (#748 is another example of someone hitting a similar point of confusion).

The other thing that tripped me up was that https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/usage.html doesn't cover the non-serialisation case, so the fact that msgspec.to_builtins is the encoding equivalent and msgspec.convert is the decoding equivalent wasn't immediately apparent.

I'll create a PR with some suggested docs tweaks.

ncoghlan added a commit to ncoghlan/msgspec that referenced this issue Dec 5, 2024
@ncoghlan
Cover conversion to/from builtins in usage docs
2e6ebfb 
Also clarify differences between `to_builtins` and `asdict`.

Closes jcrist#778
@ncoghlan ncoghlan linked a pull request Dec 5, 2024 that will close this issue
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@ncoghlan
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ncoghlan commented Dec 5, 2024

#780 attempts to cover the points above in both the main usage docs, as well as in the docstrings of to_builtins and asdict.

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Cover conversion to/from builtins in usage docs ncoghlan/msgspec
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