Is there a way to specify type hints for JSON objects with an unknown or changing structure? I want to avoid using Any or methods like cast() as much as possible.
I think the correct hint would be:
Json: TypeAlias = dict[str, "Json"] | list["Json"] | str | int | float | bool | None
Issue
However, this hint seems to not always work. The issue is illustrated below in a code sample.
import requests
from typing_extensions import TypeAlias
Json: TypeAlias = dict[str, "Json"] | list["Json"] | str | int | float | bool | None
res: requests.models.Response = requests.get(
"https://randomuser.me/api/?results=5&nat=gb"
)
data: Json = res.json()
results: Json = data["results"]
When trying to access data["results:"], errors are generated by mypy as shown below:
No overload variant of "getitem" of "list" matches argument type "str" [call-overload]
Possible overload variants: def getitem(self, SupportsIndex, /) -> Json def getitem(self, slice, /) -> list[Json]
Value of type "dict[str, Json] | list[Json] | str | int | float | bool | None" is not indexable [index]
Inquiry
What mistake am I making here? I came across this GitHub thread which might have the solution, but I may not yet fully understand types to implement it correctly.
Thank you!