Types
Where possible pydantic uses standard library types to define fields, thus smoothing the learning curve. For many useful applications, however, no standard library type exists, so pydantic implements many commonly used types.
If no existing type suits your purpose you can also implement your own pydantic-compatible types with custom properties and validation.
pydantic supports many common types from the Python standard library. If you need stricter processing see Strict Types; if you need to constrain the values allowed (e.g. to require a positive int) see Constrained Types.
None, type(None) or Literal[None] (equivalent according to PEP 484)
: allows only None value
bool
: see Booleans below for details on how bools are validated and what values are permitted
int
: pydantic uses int(v) to coerce types to an int;
see this warning on loss of information during data conversion
float
: similarly, float(v) is used to coerce values to floats
str
: strings are accepted as-is, int float and Decimal are coerced using str(v), bytes and bytearray are
converted using v.decode(), enums inheriting from str are converted using v.value,
and all other types cause an error
bytes
: bytes are accepted as-is, bytearray is converted using bytes(v), str are converted using v.encode(),
and int, float, and Decimal are coerced using str(v).encode()
list
: allows list, tuple, set, frozenset, deque, or generators and casts to a list;
see typing.List below for sub-type constraints
tuple
: allows list, tuple, set, frozenset, deque, or generators and casts to a tuple;
see typing.Tuple below for sub-type constraints
dict
: dict(v) is used to attempt to convert a dictionary;
see typing.Dict below for sub-type constraints
set
: allows list, tuple, set, frozenset, deque, or generators and casts to a set;
see typing.Set below for sub-type constraints
frozenset
: allows list, tuple, set, frozenset, deque, or generators and casts to a frozen set;
see typing.FrozenSet below for sub-type constraints
deque
: allows list, tuple, set, frozenset, deque, or generators and casts to a deque;
see typing.Deque below for sub-type constraints
datetime.date
: see Datetime Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
datetime.time
: see Datetime Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
datetime.datetime
: see Datetime Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
datetime.timedelta
: see Datetime Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Any
: allows any value including None, thus an Any field is optional
typing.Annotated
: allows wrapping another type with arbitrary metadata, as per PEP-593. The
Annotated hint may contain a single call to the Field function, but otherwise
the additional metadata is ignored and the root type is used.
typing.TypeVar
: constrains the values allowed based on constraints or bound, see TypeVar
typing.Union
: see Unions below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Optional
: Optional[x] is simply short hand for Union[x, None];
see Unions below for more detail on parsing and validation and Required Fields for details about required fields that can receive None as a value.
typing.List
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Tuple
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
subclass of typing.NamedTuple
: Same as tuple but instantiates with the given namedtuple and validates fields since they are annotated.
See Annotated Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
subclass of collections.namedtuple
: Same as subclass of typing.NamedTuple but all fields will have type Any since they are not annotated
typing.Dict
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
subclass of typing.TypedDict
: Same as dict but pydantic will validate the dictionary since keys are annotated.
See Annotated Types below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Set
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.FrozenSet
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Deque
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Sequence
: see Typing Iterables below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Iterable
: this is reserved for iterables that shouldn’t be consumed. See Infinite Generators below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Type
: see Type below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Callable
: see Callable below for more detail on parsing and validation
typing.Pattern
: will cause the input value to be passed to re.compile(v) to create a regex pattern
ipaddress.IPv4Address
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv4Address(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
ipaddress.IPv4Interface
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv4Address(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
ipaddress.IPv4Network
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv4Network(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
ipaddress.IPv6Address
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv6Address(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
ipaddress.IPv6Interface
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv6Interface(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
ipaddress.IPv6Network
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to IPv6Network(v);
see Pydantic Types for other custom IP address types
enum.Enum
: checks that the value is a valid Enum instance
subclass of enum.Enum
: checks that the value is a valid member of the enum;
see Enums and Choices for more details
enum.IntEnum
: checks that the value is a valid IntEnum instance
subclass of enum.IntEnum
: checks that the value is a valid member of the integer enum;
see Enums and Choices for more details
decimal.Decimal
: pydantic attempts to convert the value to a string, then passes the string to Decimal(v)
pathlib.Path
: simply uses the type itself for validation by passing the value to Path(v);
see Pydantic Types for other more strict path types
uuid.UUID
: strings and bytes (converted to strings) are passed to UUID(v), with a fallback to UUID(bytes=v) for bytes and bytearray;
see Pydantic Types for other stricter UUID types
ByteSize
: converts a bytes string with units to bytes
pydantic uses standard library typing types as defined in PEP 484 to define complex objects.
If you have a generator you can use Sequence as described above. In that case, the
generator will be consumed and stored on the model as a list and its values will be
validated with the sub-type of Sequence (e.g. int in Sequence[int]).
But if you have a generator that you don’t want to be consumed, e.g. an infinite
generator or a remote data loader, you can define its type with Iterable:
You can create a validator to validate the first value in an infinite generator and still not consume it entirely.
The Union type allows a model attribute to accept different types, e.g.:
However, as can be seen above, pydantic will attempt to ‘match’ any of the types defined under Union and will use
the first one that matches. In the above example the id of user_03 was defined as a uuid.UUID class (which
is defined under the attribute’s Union annotation) but as the uuid.UUID can be marshalled into an int it
chose to match against the int type and disregarded the other types.
As such, it is recommended that, when defining Union annotations, the most specific type is included first and
followed by less specific types.
In the above example, the UUID class should precede the int and str classes to preclude the unexpected representation as such:
When Union is used with multiple submodels, you sometimes know exactly which submodel needs to
be checked and validated and want to enforce this.
To do that you can set the same field - let’s call it my_discriminator - in each of the submodels
with a discriminated value, which is one (or many) Literal value(s).
For your Union, you can set the discriminator in its value: Field(discriminator='my_discriminator').
Setting a discriminated union has many benefits:
- validation is faster since it is only attempted against one model
- only one explicit error is raised in case of failure
- the generated JSON schema implements the associated OpenAPI specification
Only one discriminator can be set for a field but sometimes you want to combine multiple discriminators.
In this case you can always create “intermediate” models with __root__ and add your discriminator.
pydantic uses Python’s standard enum classes to define choices.
Pydantic supports the following datetime types:
-
datetimefields can be:-
datetime, existingdatetimeobject -
intorfloat, assumed as Unix time, i.e. seconds (if >=-2e10or <=2e10) or milliseconds (if <-2e10or >2e10) since 1 January 1970 -
str, following formats work:YYYY-MM-DD[T]HH:MM[:SS[.ffffff]][Z or [±]HH[:]MM]intorfloatas a string (assumed as Unix time)
-
-
datefields can be:-
date, existingdateobject -
intorfloat, seedatetime -
str, following formats work:YYYY-MM-DDintorfloat, seedatetime
-
-
timefields can be:-
time, existingtimeobject -
str, following formats work:HH:MM[:SS[.ffffff]][Z or [±]HH[:]MM]
-
-
timedeltafields can be:-
timedelta, existingtimedeltaobject -
intorfloat, assumed as seconds -
str, following formats work:-[HH:MM]SS[.ffffff][±]P[DD]DT[HH]H[MM]M[SS]S(ISO 8601 format for timedelta)
-
A standard bool field will raise a ValidationError if the value is not one of the following:
- A valid boolean (i.e.
TrueorFalse), - The integers
0or1, - a
strwhich when converted to lower case is one of'0', 'off', 'f', 'false', 'n', 'no', '1', 'on', 't', 'true', 'y', 'yes' - a
byteswhich is valid (per the previous rule) when decoded tostr
Here is a script demonstrating some of these behaviors:
Fields can also be of type Callable:
pydantic supports the use of Type[T] to specify that a field may only accept classes (not instances)
that are subclasses of T.
You may also use Type to specify that any class is allowed.
TypeVar is supported either unconstrained, constrained or with a bound.
pydantic supports the use of typing.Literal (or typing_extensions.Literal prior to Python 3.8)
as a lightweight way to specify that a field may accept only specific literal values:
One benefit of this field type is that it can be used to check for equality with one or more specific values without needing to declare custom validators:
With proper ordering in an annotated Union, you can use this to parse types of decreasing specificity:
pydantic also provides a variety of other useful types:
FilePath
: like Path, but the path must exist and be a file
DirectoryPath
: like Path, but the path must exist and be a directory
PastDate
: like date, but the date should be in the past
FutureDate
: like date, but the date should be in the future
EmailStr
: requires email-validator to be installed;
the input string must be a valid email address, and the output is a simple string
NameEmail
: requires email-validator to be installed;
the input string must be either a valid email address or in the format Fred Bloggs <[email protected]>,
and the output is a NameEmail object which has two properties: name and email.
For Fred Bloggs <[email protected]> the name would be "Fred Bloggs";
for [email protected] it would be "fred.bloggs".
PyObject
: expects a string and loads the Python object importable at that dotted path;
e.g. if 'math.cos' was provided, the resulting field value would be the function cos
Color
: for parsing HTML and CSS colors; see Color Type
Json
: a special type wrapper which loads JSON before parsing; see JSON Type
PaymentCardNumber
: for parsing and validating payment cards; see payment cards
AnyUrl
: any URL; see URLs
AnyHttpUrl
: an HTTP URL; see URLs
HttpUrl
: a stricter HTTP URL; see URLs
FileUrl
: a file path URL; see URLs
PostgresDsn
: a postgres DSN style URL; see URLs
CockroachDsn
: a cockroachdb DSN style URL; see URLs
AmqpDsn
: an AMQP DSN style URL as used by RabbitMQ, StormMQ, ActiveMQ etc.; see URLs
RedisDsn
: a redis DSN style URL; see URLs
MongoDsn
: a MongoDB DSN style URL; see URLs
KafkaDsn
: a kafka DSN style URL; see URLs
stricturl
: a type method for arbitrary URL constraints; see URLs
UUID1
: requires a valid UUID of type 1; see UUID above
UUID3
: requires a valid UUID of type 3; see UUID above
UUID4
: requires a valid UUID of type 4; see UUID above
UUID5
: requires a valid UUID of type 5; see UUID above
SecretBytes
: bytes where the value is kept partially secret; see Secrets
SecretStr
: string where the value is kept partially secret; see Secrets
IPvAnyAddress
: allows either an IPv4Address or an IPv6Address
IPvAnyInterface
: allows either an IPv4Interface or an IPv6Interface
IPvAnyNetwork
: allows either an IPv4Network or an IPv6Network
NegativeFloat
: allows a float which is negative; uses standard float parsing then checks the value is less than 0;
see Constrained Types
NegativeInt
: allows an int which is negative; uses standard int parsing then checks the value is less than 0;
see Constrained Types
PositiveFloat
: allows a float which is positive; uses standard float parsing then checks the value is greater than 0;
see Constrained Types
PositiveInt
: allows an int which is positive; uses standard int parsing then checks the value is greater than 0;
see Constrained Types
conbytes
: type method for constraining bytes;
see Constrained Types
condecimal
: type method for constraining Decimals;
see Constrained Types
confloat
: type method for constraining floats;
see Constrained Types
conint
: type method for constraining ints;
see Constrained Types
condate
: type method for constraining dates;
see Constrained Types
conlist
: type method for constraining lists;
see Constrained Types
conset
: type method for constraining sets;
see Constrained Types
confrozenset
: type method for constraining frozen sets;
see Constrained Types
constr
: type method for constraining strs;
see Constrained Types
For URI/URL validation the following types are available:
AnyUrl: any scheme allowed, TLD not required, host requiredAnyHttpUrl: schemehttporhttps, TLD not required, host requiredHttpUrl: schemehttporhttps, TLD required, host required, max length 2083FileUrl: schemefile, host not requiredPostgresDsn: user info required, TLD not required, host required, as of V.10PostgresDsnsupports multiple hosts. The following schemes are supported:postgrespostgresqlpostgresql+asyncpgpostgresql+pg8000postgresql+psycopgpostgresql+psycopg2postgresql+psycopg2cffipostgresql+py-postgresqlpostgresql+pygresql
CockroachDsn: schemecockroachdb, user info required, TLD not required, host required. Also, its supported DBAPI dialects:cockroachdb+asyncpgcockroachdb+psycopg2
AmqpDsn: schemaamqporamqps, user info not required, TLD not required, host not requiredRedisDsn: schemeredisorrediss, user info not required, tld not required, host not required (CHANGED: user info) (e.g.,rediss://:pass@localhost)MongoDsn: schememongodb, user info not required, database name not required, port not required from v1.6 onwards), user info may be passed without user part (e.g.,mongodb://mongodb0.example.com:27017)stricturl: method with the following keyword arguments:strip_whitespace: bool = Truemin_length: int = 1max_length: int = 2 ** 16tld_required: bool = Truehost_required: bool = Trueallowed_schemes: Optional[Set[str]] = None
The above types (which all inherit from AnyUrl) will attempt to give descriptive errors when invalid URLs are
provided:
If you require a custom URI/URL type, it can be created in a similar way to the types defined above.
Assuming an input URL of http://samuel:[email protected]:8000/the/path/?query=here#fragment=is;this=bit,
the above types export the following properties:
-
scheme: always set - the url scheme (httpabove) -
host: always set - the url host (example.comabove) -
host_type: always set - describes the type of host, either:domain: e.g.example.com,int_domain: international domain, see below, e.g.exampl£e.org,ipv4: an IP V4 address, e.g.127.0.0.1, oripv6: an IP V6 address, e.g.2001:db8:ff00:42
-
user: optional - the username if included (samuelabove) -
password: optional - the password if included (passabove) -
tld: optional - the top level domain (comabove), Note: this will be wrong for any two-level domain, e.g. “co.uk”. You’ll need to implement your own list of TLDs if you require full TLD validation -
port: optional - the port (8000above) -
path: optional - the path (/the/path/above) -
query: optional - the URL query (aka GET arguments or “search string”) (query=hereabove) -
fragment: optional - the fragment (fragment=is;this=bitabove)
If further validation is required, these properties can be used by validators to enforce specific behaviour:
“International domains” (e.g. a URL where the host or TLD includes non-ascii characters) will be encoded via punycode (see this article for a good description of why this is important):
You can use the Color data type for storing colors as per
CSS3 specification. Colors can be defined via:
- name (e.g.
"Black","azure") - hexadecimal value
(e.g.
"0x000","#FFFFFF","7fffd4") - RGB/RGBA tuples (e.g.
(255, 255, 255),(255, 255, 255, 0.5)) - RGB/RGBA strings
(e.g.
"rgb(255, 255, 255)","rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)") - HSL strings
(e.g.
"hsl(270, 60%, 70%)","hsl(270, 60%, 70%, .5)")
Color has the following methods:
original
: the original string or tuple passed to Color
as_named
: returns a named CSS3 color; fails if the alpha channel is set or no such color exists unless
fallback=True is supplied, in which case it falls back to as_hex
as_hex
: returns a string in the format #fff or #ffffff; will contain 4 (or 8) hex values if the alpha channel is set,
e.g. #7f33cc26
as_rgb
: returns a string in the format rgb(<red>, <green>, <blue>), or rgba(<red>, <green>, <blue>, <alpha>)
if the alpha channel is set
as_rgb_tuple
: returns a 3- or 4-tuple in RGB(a) format. The alpha keyword argument can be used to define whether
the alpha channel should be included;
options: True - always include, False - never include, None (default) - include if set
as_hsl
: string in the format hsl(<hue deg>, <saturation %>, <lightness %>)
or hsl(<hue deg>, <saturation %>, <lightness %>, <alpha>) if the alpha channel is set
as_hsl_tuple
: returns a 3- or 4-tuple in HSL(a) format. The alpha keyword argument can be used to define whether
the alpha channel should be included;
options: True - always include, False - never include, None (the default) - include if set
The __str__ method for Color returns self.as_named(fallback=True).
You can use the SecretStr and the SecretBytes data types for storing sensitive information
that you do not want to be visible in logging or tracebacks.
SecretStr and SecretBytes can be initialized idempotently or by using str or bytes literals respectively.
The SecretStr and SecretBytes will be formatted as either '**********' or '' on conversion to json.
You can use Json data type to make pydantic first load a raw JSON string.
It can also optionally be used to parse the loaded object into another type base on
the type Json is parameterised with:
The PaymentCardNumber type validates payment cards
(such as a debit or credit card).
PaymentCardBrand can be one of the following based on the BIN:
PaymentCardBrand.amexPaymentCardBrand.mastercardPaymentCardBrand.visaPaymentCardBrand.other
The actual validation verifies the card number is:
- a
strof only digits - luhn valid
- the correct length based on the BIN, if Amex, Mastercard or Visa, and between 12 and 19 digits for all other brands
The value of numerous common types can be restricted using con* type functions:
Where Field refers to the field function.
The following arguments are available when using the conlist type function
item_type: Type[T]: type of the list itemsmin_items: int = None: minimum number of items in the listmax_items: int = None: maximum number of items in the listunique_items: bool = None: enforces list elements to be unique
The following arguments are available when using the conset type function
item_type: Type[T]: type of the set itemsmin_items: int = None: minimum number of items in the setmax_items: int = None: maximum number of items in the set
The following arguments are available when using the confrozenset type function
item_type: Type[T]: type of the frozenset itemsmin_items: int = None: minimum number of items in the frozensetmax_items: int = None: maximum number of items in the frozenset
The following arguments are available when using the conint type function
strict: bool = False: controls type coerciongt: int = None: enforces integer to be greater than the set valuege: int = None: enforces integer to be greater than or equal to the set valuelt: int = None: enforces integer to be less than the set valuele: int = None: enforces integer to be less than or equal to the set valuemultiple_of: int = None: enforces integer to be a multiple of the set value
The following arguments are available when using the confloat type function
strict: bool = False: controls type coerciongt: float = None: enforces float to be greater than the set valuege: float = None: enforces float to be greater than or equal to the set valuelt: float = None: enforces float to be less than the set valuele: float = None: enforces float to be less than or equal to the set valuemultiple_of: float = None: enforces float to be a multiple of the set valueallow_inf_nan: bool = True: whether to allows infinity (+infan-inf) and NaN values, defaults toTrue, set toFalsefor compatibility withJSON, see #3994 for more details, added in V1.10
The following arguments are available when using the condecimal type function
gt: Decimal = None: enforces decimal to be greater than the set valuege: Decimal = None: enforces decimal to be greater than or equal to the set valuelt: Decimal = None: enforces decimal to be less than the set valuele: Decimal = None: enforces decimal to be less than or equal to the set valuemax_digits: int = None: maximum number of digits within the decimal. it does not include a zero before the decimal point or trailing decimal zeroesdecimal_places: int = None: max number of decimal places allowed. it does not include trailing decimal zeroesmultiple_of: Decimal = None: enforces decimal to be a multiple of the set value
The following arguments are available when using the constr type function
strip_whitespace: bool = False: removes leading and trailing whitespaceto_upper: bool = False: turns all characters to uppercaseto_lower: bool = False: turns all characters to lowercasestrict: bool = False: controls type coercionmin_length: int = None: minimum length of the stringmax_length: int = None: maximum length of the stringcurtail_length: int = None: shrinks the string length to the set value when it is longer than the set valueregex: str = None: regex to validate the string against
The following arguments are available when using the conbytes type function
strip_whitespace: bool = False: removes leading and trailing whitespaceto_upper: bool = False: turns all characters to uppercaseto_lower: bool = False: turns all characters to lowercasemin_length: int = None: minimum length of the byte stringmax_length: int = None: maximum length of the byte stringstrict: bool = False: controls type coercion
The following arguments are available when using the condate type function
gt: date = None: enforces date to be greater than the set valuege: date = None: enforces date to be greater than or equal to the set valuelt: date = None: enforces date to be less than the set valuele: date = None: enforces date to be less than or equal to the set value
You can use the StrictStr, StrictBytes, StrictInt, StrictFloat, and StrictBool types
to prevent coercion from compatible types.
These types will only pass validation when the validated value is of the respective type or is a subtype of that type.
This behavior is also exposed via the strict field of the ConstrainedStr, ConstrainedBytes,
ConstrainedFloat and ConstrainedInt classes and can be combined with a multitude of complex validation rules.
The following caveats apply:
StrictBytes(and thestrictoption ofConstrainedBytes) will accept bothbytes, andbytearraytypes.StrictInt(and thestrictoption ofConstrainedInt) will not acceptbooltypes, even thoughboolis a subclass ofintin Python. Other subclasses will work.StrictFloat(and thestrictoption ofConstrainedFloat) will not acceptint.
You can use the ByteSize data type to convert byte string representation to
raw bytes and print out human readable versions of the bytes as well.
You can also define your own custom data types. There are several ways to achieve it.
You use a custom class with a classmethod __get_validators__. It will be called
to get validators to parse and validate the input data.
Similar validation could be achieved using constr(regex=...) except the value won’t be
formatted with a space, the schema would just include the full pattern and the returned value would be a vanilla string.
See schema for more details on how the model’s schema is generated.
You can allow arbitrary types using the arbitrary_types_allowed config in the
Model Config.
You can use
Generic Classes as
field types and perform custom validation based on the “type parameters” (or sub-types)
with __get_validators__.
If the Generic class that you are using as a sub-type has a classmethod
__get_validators__ you don’t need to use arbitrary_types_allowed for it to work.
Because you can declare validators that receive the current field, you can extract
the sub_fields (from the generic class type parameters) and validate data with them.