py-api-dumper 4.1

Python API dumping and comparison tool

Python API dumping and comparison tool

Dumps the public API of a Python module and its members to a file, which can then be used to show differences in the public API between two dumps, e.g. of different versions of the same module.

Command-line interface

$ py-api-dumper --help

• To dump the public API of a module mymod:

  $ py-api-dumper dump -o mymod1.dump mymod
  

  mymod1.dump will record the public API of mymod in a reloadable format.

• To print the API of mymod in text format:

  $ py-api-dumper dump mymod
  MODULE : mymod
      CLASS : myclass
          FUNCTION : __init__ : no-return-type
              REQUIRED : 0 : x : int
  ...
  

  The text format is a tree of entries of each nested class, class method, function, member variable, etc. in the public API.

• To compare the API of mymod between different versions:

  $ py-api-dumper diff mymod-old.dump mymod-new.dump
  --- mymod-old.dump mymod=1.0
  +++ mymod-new.dump mymod=2.0
  +MODULE : mymod
  +    CLASS : myclass
  +        FUNCTION : __init__ : no-return-type
  +            REQUIRED : 1 : b : no-type
  

  The above output shows the expected output if, between mymod versions 1.0 and 2.0, an additional positional argument b had been added to the __init__ method of the class mymod.myclass.

  $ py-api-dumper diff -o mymod.diff ...
  

  This will write out the API differences to mymod.diff in JSON format:

  • the paths to the dumps of the old and new APIs, e.g. mymod-old.dump vs. mymod-new.dump;
  • the version of mymod at the old and new API dumps, e.g. mymod 1.0 vs. 2.0;
  • API entries which have been removed, i.e. present in the old API but not in the new API (e.g. none in the above example);
  • API entries which have been added, i.e. present in the new API but not in the old API (e.g. the b argument in the above example).

Python interface

from py_api_dumper import APIDump, APIDiff

• To dump the public API of a module mymod:

  import mymod
  dump = APIDump.from_modules(mymod)   # OR: APIDump.from_modules("mymod")
  dump.save_to_file("mymod.dump")
  

• To print the API of mymod in text format:

  dump.print_as_text()
  

• To compare the API of mymod between different versions:

  diff = APIDiff.from_files("mymod-old.dump", "mymod-new.dump")
  diff.print_as_text()
  diff.save_as_json("mymod.diff")