Skip to main content

A rust-like result type for Python

Project description

Build status PyPI Downloads Coverage

A simple Result type inspired by Rust.

The idea is that a Result value can be either Ok(value) or Err(error), with a way to differentiate between the two. It will change code like this:

def get_user_by_email(email):
    """
    Return the user instance or an error message.
    """
    if not user_exists(email):
        return None, 'User does not exist'
    if not user_active(email):
        return None, 'User is inactive'
    user = get_user(email)
    return user, None

user, reason = get_user_by_email('ueli@example.com')
if user is None:
    raise RuntimeError('Could not fetch user: %s' % reason)
else:
    do_something(user)

To something like this:

from result import Ok, Err

def get_user_by_email(email):
    """
    Return the user instance or an error message.
    """
    if not user_exists(email):
        return Err('User does not exist')
    if not user_active(email):
        return Err('User is inactive')
    user = get_user(email)
    return Ok(user)

user_result = get_user_by_email(email)
if user_result.is_ok():
    do_something(user_result.value)
else:
    raise RuntimeError('Could not fetch user: %s' user_result.value)

As this is Python and not Rust, you will lose some of the advantages that it brings, like elegant combinations with the match statement. On the other side, you don’t have to return semantically unclear tuples anymore.

Not all methods (https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/result/enum.Result.html) have been implemented, only the ones that make sense in the Python context. You still don’t get any type safety, but some easier handling of types that can be OK or not, without resorting to custom exceptions.

API

Creating an instance:

>>> from result import Ok, Err
>>> res1 = Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Err('nay')

Or through the class methods:

>>> from result import Result
>>> res1 = Result.Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Result.Err('nay')

Checking whether a result is ok or not:

>>> res = Ok('yay')
>>> res.is_ok()
True
>>> res.is_err()
False

Convert a Result to the value or None:

>>> res1 = Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Err('nay')
>>> res1.ok()
'yay'
>>> res2.ok()
None

Convert a Result to the error or None:

>>> res1 = Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Err('nay')
>>> res1.err()
None
>>> res2.err()
'nay'

Access the value directly, without any other checks (like unwrap() in Rust):

>>> res1 = Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Err('nay')
>>> res1.value
'yay'
>>> res2.value
'nay'

Note that this is a property, you cannot assign to it. Results are immutable.

For your convenience, simply creating an Ok result without value is the same as using True:

>>> res1 = Result.Ok()
>>> res1.value
True
>>> res2 = Ok()
>>> res2.value
True

In case you’re missing methods like unwrap_or(default), these can be achieved by regular Python constructs:

>>> res1 = Ok('yay')
>>> res2 = Err('nay')
>>> res1.ok() or 'default'
'yay'
>>> res2.ok() or 'default'
'default'

License

MIT License

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

result-0.3.0.tar.gz (4.5 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

result-0.3.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (7.0 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 2 Python 3

File details

Details for the file result-0.3.0.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: result-0.3.0.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 4.5 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No

File hashes

Hashes for result-0.3.0.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 ffa75336a4c269211e52192725db268d2ad95c6dd900846a0d08aaa3b3046321
MD5 d7853082fcfb416597199aef34bc907f
BLAKE2b-256 6158a5567e284eb25f11a2e412e4f5686a8548b57b1f718c54b3fc2ad1d65767

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file result-0.3.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for result-0.3.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 e947cf0e768913ef66d135139f0bed5b48ebec4d87ce3c76c29ff794e0a7d54f
MD5 fbf2f7e1a3493bc4ab05b698895bfd79
BLAKE2b-256 8699b1ec36110856f740d8304437816bd88f9aa2b3e506697881bb2b7c9ca936

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page