typing-self.md

author	orsinium
id	711
published	2022-12-03
topics	typing
traces	module typing type Self
pep	673
python	3.11

typing.Self

As we covered a 3 years back (gosh, the channel is old), if the result of a base class is the current class, a TypeVar should be used as the annotation:

from typing import TypeVar

U = TypeVar('U', bound='BaseUser')

class BaseUser:
  @classmethod
  def new(cls: type[U]) -> U:
    ...

  def copy(self: U) -> U:
    ...

That's quite verbose, but it's how it should be done for the return type for inherited classes to be correct.

PEP 673 (landed in Python 3.11) introduced a new type Self that can be used as a shortcut for exactly such cases:

from typing import Self

class BaseUser:
  @classmethod
  def new(cls) -> Self:
    ...

  def copy(self) -> Self:
    ...