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Cover omit_defaults handling in asdict and to_builtins documentation #778
Description
Description
(I'm not sure if this is a bug report or a feature request, so I opted for a feature request in case the current behaviour is intentional)
I am using msgspec to help communicate with a server where a boolean field can be set to None in the data model not because null is a valid value, but because it is permitted to omit the key entirely. The relevant struct has omit_defaults=True set accordingly.
However, msgspec isn't handling the full message serialisation (httpx is doing that), so I attempted to use asdict to generate the message spec portion of the message.
This failed, as asdict includes all fields, without paying attention to omit_defaults.
Reacted by 叶子
Activity
[-]`asdict` should respect `omit_defaults`[/-][+]Feature: add alternative API to `asdict` that respects `omit_defaults`[/+][-]Feature: add alternative API to `asdict` that respects `omit_defaults`[/-][+]Cover `omit_defaults` handling in `asdict` and `to_builtins` documentation[/+]ncoghlan commentedon Dec 5, 2024
After exploring the docs further, I discovered that the "recursively convert to builtin types, while respecting
omit_defaults" API exists: it isto_builtins.Neither
msgspec.struct.asdictnormsgspec.to_builtinsmentionomit_defaultsin their documentation, so even though they have "See also" links to each other, it isn't clear why you might choose one over the other. (#748 is another example of someone hitting a similar point of confusion).The other thing that tripped me up was that https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/usage.html doesn't cover the non-serialisation case, so the fact that
msgspec.to_builtinsis the encoding equivalent andmsgspec.convertis the decoding equivalent wasn't immediately apparent.I'll create a PR with some suggested docs tweaks.
Cover conversion to/from builtins in usage docs
ncoghlan commentedon Dec 5, 2024
#780 attempts to cover the points above in both the main usage docs, as well as in the docstrings of
to_builtinsandasdict.Document differences between structs.asdict/astuple and to_builtins (#…