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A minimalist, zero-dependency Inversion of Control (IoC) container for Python.

Project description

📦 Pico-IoC: A Robust, Async-Native IoC Container for Python

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Pico-IoC is a lightweight, async-ready, decorator-driven IoC container built for clarity, testability, and performance. It brings Inversion of Control and dependency injection to Python in a deterministic, modern, and framework-agnostic way.

🐍 Requires Python 3.10+


⚖️ Core Principles

  • Single Purpose – Do one thing: dependency management.
  • Declarative – Use simple decorators (@component, @factory, @provides, @configured) instead of complex config files.
  • Deterministic – No hidden scanning or side-effects; everything flows from an explicit init().
  • Async-Native – Fully supports async providers, async lifecycle hooks (__ainit__), and async interceptors.
  • Fail-Fast – Detects missing bindings and circular dependencies at bootstrap (init()).
  • Testable by Design – Use overrides and profiles to swap components instantly.
  • Zero Core Dependencies – Built entirely on the Python standard library. Optional features may require external packages (see Installation).

🚀 Why Pico-IoC?

As Python systems evolve, wiring dependencies by hand becomes fragile and unmaintainable. Pico-IoC eliminates that friction by letting you declare how components relate — not how they’re created.

Feature Manual Wiring With Pico-IoC
Object creation svc = Service(Repo(Config())) svc = container.get(Service)
Replacing deps Monkey-patch overrides={Repo: FakeRepo()}
Coupling Tight Loose
Testing Painful Instant
Async support Manual Built-in (aget, __ainit__)

🧩 Highlights (v2.2+)

  • Unified Configuration: Use @configured to bind both flat (ENV-like) and tree (YAML/JSON) sources via the configuration(...) builder (ADR-0010).
  • Extensible Scanning: Use CustomScanner to hook into the discovery phase and register functions or custom decorators (ADR-0011).
  • Async-aware AOP: Method interceptors via @intercepted_by.
  • Scoped resolution: singleton, prototype, request, session, transaction, and custom scopes.
  • Tree-based configuration: Advanced mapping with reusable adapters (Annotated[Union[...], Discriminator(...)]).
  • Observable context: Built-in stats, health checks (@health), observer hooks (ContainerObserver), and dependency graph export.

📦 Installation

pip install pico-ioc

Optional extras:

  • YAML configuration support (requires PyYAML)

    pip install pico-ioc[yaml]
    

⚠️ Important Note

Breaking Behavior in Scope Management (v2.1.3+): Scope LRU Eviction has been removed to guarantee data integrity.

  • Frameworks (pico-fastapi): Handled automatically.
  • Manual usage: You must explicitly call container._caches.cleanup_scope("scope_name", scope_id) when a context ends to prevent memory leaks.

⚙️ Quick Example (Unified Configuration)

import os
from dataclasses import dataclass
from pico_ioc import component, configured, configuration, init, EnvSource

# 1. Define configuration with @configured
@configured(prefix="APP_", mapping="auto")  # Auto-detects flat mapping
@dataclass
class Config:
    db_url: str = "sqlite:///demo.db"

# 2. Define components
@component
class Repo:
    def __init__(self, cfg: Config):  # Inject config
        self.cfg = cfg
    def fetch(self):
        return f"fetching from {self.cfg.db_url}"

@component
class Service:
    def __init__(self, repo: Repo):  # Inject Repo
        self.repo = repo
    def run(self):
        return self.repo.fetch()

# --- Example Setup ---
os.environ['APP_DB_URL'] = 'postgresql://user:pass@host/db'

# 3. Build configuration context
config_ctx = configuration(
    EnvSource(prefix="")  # Read APP_DB_URL from environment
)

# 4. Initialize container
container = init(modules=[__name__], config=config_ctx)  # Pass context via 'config'

# 5. Get and use the service
svc = container.get(Service)
print(svc.run())

# --- Cleanup ---
del os.environ['APP_DB_URL']

Output:

fetching from postgresql://user:pass@host/db

🧪 Testing with Overrides

class FakeRepo:
    def fetch(self): return "fake-data"

# Build configuration context (might be empty or specific for test)
test_config_ctx = configuration()

# Use overrides during init
container = init(
    modules=[__name__],
    config=test_config_ctx,
    overrides={Repo: FakeRepo()}  # Replace Repo with FakeRepo
)

svc = container.get(Service)
assert svc.run() == "fake-data"

🧰 Profiles

Use profiles to enable/disable components or configuration branches conditionally.

# Enable "test" profile when bootstrapping the container
container = init(
    modules=[__name__],
    profiles=["test"]
)

Profiles are typically referenced in decorators or configuration mappings to include/exclude components and bindings.


⚡ Async Components

Pico-IoC supports async lifecycle and resolution.

import asyncio
from pico_ioc import component, init

@component
class AsyncRepo:
    async def __ainit__(self):
        # e.g., open async connections
        self.ready = True

    async def fetch(self):
        return "async-data"

async def main():
    container = init(modules=[__name__])
    repo = await container.aget(AsyncRepo)   # Async resolution
    print(await repo.fetch())
    
    # Graceful async shutdown (calls @cleanup async methods)
    await container.ashutdown()

asyncio.run(main())
  • __ainit__ runs after construction if defined.
  • Use container.aget(Type) to resolve components that require async initialization.
  • Use await container.ashutdown() to close resources cleanly.

🩺 Lifecycle & AOP

import time
from pico_ioc import component, init, intercepted_by, MethodInterceptor, MethodCtx

# Define an interceptor component
@component
class LogInterceptor(MethodInterceptor):
    def invoke(self, ctx: MethodCtx, call_next):
        print(f"→ calling {ctx.cls.__name__}.{ctx.name}")
        start = time.perf_counter()
        try:
            res = call_next(ctx)
            duration = (time.perf_counter() - start) * 1000
            print(f"← {ctx.cls.__name__}.{ctx.name} done ({duration:.2f}ms)")
            return res
        except Exception as e:
            duration = (time.perf_counter() - start) * 1000
            print(f"← {ctx.cls.__name__}.{ctx.name} failed ({duration:.2f}ms): {e}")
            raise

@component
class Demo:
    @intercepted_by(LogInterceptor)  # Apply the interceptor
    def work(self):
        print("   Working...")
        time.sleep(0.01)
        return "ok"

# Initialize container (must scan module containing interceptor too)
c = init(modules=[__name__])
result = c.get(Demo).work()
print(f"Result: {result}")

👁️ Observability & Cleanup

  • Export a dependency graph in DOT format:

    c = init(modules=[...])
    c.export_graph("dependencies.dot")  # Writes directly to file
    
  • Health checks:

    • Annotate health probes inside components with @health for container-level reporting.
    • The container exposes health information that can be queried in observability tooling.
  • Container cleanup:

    • For sync apps: container.shutdown()
    • For async apps: await container.ashutdown()

Use cleanup in application shutdown hooks to release resources deterministically.


📖 Documentation

The full documentation is available within the docs/ directory of the project repository. Start with docs/README.md for navigation.

  • Getting Started: docs/getting-started.md
  • User Guide: docs/user-guide/README.md
  • Advanced Features: docs/advanced-features/README.md
  • Observability: docs/observability/README.md
  • Cookbook (Patterns): docs/cookbook/README.md
  • Architecture: docs/architecture/README.md
  • API Reference: docs/api-reference/README.md
  • ADR Index: docs/adr/README.md

🧩 Development

pip install tox
tox

🧾 Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md — Significant redesigns and features in v2.0+.


📜 License

MIT — LICENSE

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