Usage with mypy

pydantic models work with mypy provided you use the annotation-only version of required fields:

Python 3.7 and abovePython 3.9 and abovePython 3.10 and above

from datetime import datetime
from typing import List, Optional
from pydantic import BaseModel, NoneStr


class Model(BaseModel):
    age: int
    first_name = 'John'
    last_name: NoneStr = None
    signup_ts: Optional[datetime] = None
    list_of_ints: List[int]


m = Model(age=42, list_of_ints=[1, '2', b'3'])
print(m.middle_name)  # not a model field!
Model()  # will raise a validation error for age and list_of_ints

from datetime import datetime
from typing import Optional
from pydantic import BaseModel, NoneStr


class Model(BaseModel):
    age: int
    first_name = 'John'
    last_name: NoneStr = None
    signup_ts: Optional[datetime] = None
    list_of_ints: list[int]


m = Model(age=42, list_of_ints=[1, '2', b'3'])
print(m.middle_name)  # not a model field!
Model()  # will raise a validation error for age and list_of_ints

from datetime import datetime
from pydantic import BaseModel, NoneStr


class Model(BaseModel):
    age: int
    first_name = 'John'
    last_name: NoneStr = None
    signup_ts: datetime | None = None
    list_of_ints: list[int]


m = Model(age=42, list_of_ints=[1, '2', b'3'])
print(m.middle_name)  # not a model field!
Model()  # will raise a validation error for age and list_of_ints

(This script is complete, it should run "as is")

You can run your code through mypy with:

mypy \
  --ignore-missing-imports \
  --follow-imports=skip \
  --strict-optional \
  pydantic_mypy_test.py

If you call mypy on the example code above, you should see mypy detect the attribute access error:

13: error: "Model" has no attribute "middle_name"

Strict Optional

For your code to pass with --strict-optional, you need to to use Optional[] or an alias of Optional[] for all fields with None as the default. (This is standard with mypy.)

Pydantic provides a few useful optional or union types:

• NoneStr aka. Optional[str]
• NoneBytes aka. Optional[bytes]
• StrBytes aka. Union[str, bytes]
• NoneStrBytes aka. Optional[StrBytes]

If these aren't sufficient you can of course define your own.

Mypy Plugin

Pydantic ships with a mypy plugin that adds a number of important pydantic-specific features to mypy that improve its ability to type-check your code.

See the pydantic mypy plugin docs for more details.

Other pydantic interfaces

Pydantic dataclasses and the validate_arguments decorator should also work well with mypy.