Incorrect type declaration for http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler.__init__ #7160

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1. Akuli commented on Feb 8, 2022

   

   Akuli

   on Feb 8, 2022

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   To me, it seems to always be a socket, so _RequestType isn't great either as that would mean it's sometimes tuple[bytes, socket].
2. kkirsche commented on Aug 18, 2022

   

   kkirsche

   on Aug 18, 2022

   Last edited by kkirsche

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   Walking backwards through the cpython code:

   1. http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler doesn't define an __init__ method, rather it inherits it from socketserver.StreamRequestHandler
   2. socketserver.StreamRequestHandler also does not define an __init__ method, inheriting it from socketserver.BaseRequestHandler
   3. socketserver.BaseRequestHandler defines the __init__ method.

   So, with that in mind, looking at socketserver.BaseRequestHandler in typeshed, the signature is defined as:

       def __init__(self, request: _RequestType, client_address: _AddressType, server: BaseServer) -> None: ...

   The aliases here are defined as follows, while BaseServer is a socketserver class:

   _RequestType: TypeAlias = Union[_socket, tuple[bytes, _socket]]
   _AddressType: TypeAlias = Union[tuple[str, int], str]

   So with this in mind, if we look at the Python page's documentation, the request attribute isn't mentioned in any way:
   https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html#http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler

   This attribute is also not used in any of the defined methods on the BaseHTTPRequestHandler, it is used though in the setup method of the StreamRequestHandler seen here where it gets aliased to self.connection:
   https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/socketserver.py#L798

   Since this attempts to call instance methods on this value without any form of type checking, I would say this is correctly typed even though it's not necessarily correctly modeled:
   https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/socketserver.py#L801
3. Hibou57 commented on Sep 22, 2026

   

   Hibou57

   on Sep 22, 2026

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   The type of the first parameter of http.server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler.__init__ shall be socketserver._RequestType, not bytes.

   It seems to be like this in typeshed now. The issue is a bit more than four years from now, but still marked as opened. Indeed, it was likely bytes before. Reviewing something written about seven years ago, I had a BaseHTTPRequestHandler declaring to expect bytes for the request parameters. It was typechecked with MyPy, at that time. Now, reviewing everything, PyRight complained the type is not correct and say it should be as some people said in this thread : socket | tuple[bytes, socket].

   May be the issue has been solved and it was forgotten to tag it as solved?

   👍React with 👍1Reacted by Jinoh Kang
4. iamahuman commented on Sep 22, 2026

   

   iamahuman

   on Sep 22, 2026

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   Fixed in #9055.
5. iamahuman

   closed this as completedon Sep 22, 2026