The correct way to annotate a "file type" in Python

Question

In modern versions of Python one can have static type analysis using function annotations, according to PEP 484. This is made easy through the typing module.

Now I'm wondering how I would give a "type hint" towards a "filestream".

def myfunction(file: FILETYPE):
    pass

with open(fname) as file:
    myfunction(file)

What would I insert as FILETYPE?

Using print(type(file)) returns <class '_io.TextIOWrapper'> which isn't clear at all.

Isn't there a generic "file" type?

Answer 1

You can use typing.IO, typing.TextIO, and typing.BinaryIO to represent different types of I/O streams. To quote the documentation:

сlass typing.IO
class typing.TextIO
class typing.BinaryIO

Generic type IO[AnyStr] and its subclasses TextIO(IO[str]) and BinaryIO(IO[bytes]) represent the types of I/O streams such as returned by open().

Answer 2

I think you want io.IOBase, "[t]he abstract base class for all I/O classes, acting on streams of bytes."

Note that this includes also in-memory streams like io.StringIO and io.BytesIO. Read the documentation on the module io for details.

Answer 3

Either this:

from typing import TextIO # or IO or BinaryIO

def myfunction(file: TextIO ):
    pass

OR this

from typing import TYPE_CHECKING
if TYPE_CHECKING:
    from typing import TextIO # or IO or BinaryIO

def myfunction(file: 'TextIO'):
    pass

The second approach would avoid to import the class during execution. Although python would still have to import TYPE_CHECKING during execution, it is a good practice to avoid importing classes for type hinting only: (1) doesn't get executed (just parsed), and (2) it could avoid cyclic imports.