Skip to main content
Version: 2.12 (deprecated)

Creating new fields

How to create a Field, including the available templates.


Before creating a new target type, the first step is to create all of the target type's fields.

Defining a Field

To define a new field:

  1. Subclass one of the below field templates, like IntField or BoolField; or, subclass an existing field, like SingleSourceField.
  2. Set the class property alias. This is the symbol that people use in BUILD files.
  3. Set the class property help. This is used by ./pants help.

For example:

from pants.engine.target import IntField

class TimeoutField(IntField):
alias = "timeout"
help = "How long to run until timing out."

default

The default is used whenever a user does not explicitly specify the field in a BUILD file.

class TimeoutField(IntField):
alias = "timeout"
help = "..."
default = 60

If you don't override this property, default will be set to None, which signals that the value was undefined.

required

Set required = True to require explicitly defining the field.

class TimeoutField(IntField):
alias = "timeout"
help = "..."
required = True

If you set required = True, the default will be ignored.

Reminder: subclass existing fields to modify their behavior

If you want to change how an existing field behaves, you should subclass the original field. For example, if you want to change a default value, subclass the original field. When doing this, you only need to override the properties you want to change.

See Concepts for how subclassing plays a key role in the Target API.

Adding custom validation

The field templates will validate that users are using the correct types, like ints or strings. But you may want to add additional validation, such as banning certain values.

To do this, override the classmethod compute_value:

from pants.engine.target import IntField, InvalidFieldException

class UploadTimeout(IntField):
alias = "timeout"
help = "..."
default = 30

@classmethod
def compute_value(
cls, raw_value: Optional[int], *, address: Address
) -> int:
value_or_default = super().compute_value(raw_value, address=address)
if value_or_default < 10 or value_or_default > 300:
raise InvalidFieldException(
f"The {repr(cls.alias)} field in target {address} must "
f"be between 10 and 300, but was {value_or_default}."
)
return value_or_default

Be careful to use the same type hint for the parameter raw_value as used in the template. This is used to generate the documentation in ./pants help my_target.

Cannot use new type hint syntax with compute_value() and default

You cannot use the new type hint syntax with the Target API, i.e. list[str] | None instead of Optional[List[str]]. The new syntax breaks ./pants help.

Otherwise, it's safe to use the new syntax when writing plugins.

Available templates

All templates are defined in pants.engine.target.

BoolField

Use this when the option is a boolean toggle. You must either set required = True or set default to False or True.

TriBoolField

This is like BoolField, but allows you to use None to represent a third state. You do not have to set required = True or default, as the field template defaults to None already.

IntField

Use this when you expect an integer. This will reject floats.

FloatField

Use this when you expect a float. This will reject integers.

StringField

Use this when you expect a single string.

StringField can be like an enum

You can set the class property valid_choices to limit what strings are acceptable. This class property can either be a tuple of strings or an enum.Enum.

For example:

class LeafyGreensField(StringField):
alias = "leafy_greens"
valid_choices = ("kale", "spinach", "chard")

or:

class LeafyGreens(Enum):
KALE = "kale"
SPINACH = "spinach"
CHARD = "chard"

class LeafyGreensField(StringField):
alias = "leafy_greens"
valid_choices = LeafyGreens

StringSequenceField

Use this when you expect 0-n strings.

The user may use a tuple, set, or list in their BUILD file; Pants will convert the value to an immutable tuple.

SequenceField

Use this when you expect a homogenous sequence of values other than strings, such as a sequence of integers.

The user may use a tuple, set, or list in their BUILD file; Pants will convert the value to an immutable tuple.

You must set the class properties expected_element_type and expected_type_description. You should also change the type signature of the classmethod compute_value so that Pants can show the correct types when running ./pants help $target_type.

class ExampleIntSequence(SequenceField):
alias = "int_sequence"
expected_element_type = int
expected_type_description = "a sequence of integers"

@classmethod
def compute_value(
raw_value: Optional[Iterable[int]], *, address: Address
) -> Optional[Tuple[int, ...]]:
return super().compute_value(raw_value, address=address)

DictStringToStringField

Use this when you expect a dictionary of string keys with strings values, such as {"k": "v"}.

The user may use a normal Python dictionary in their BUILD file. Pants will convert this into an instance of pants.util.frozendict.FrozenDict, which is a lightweight wrapper around the native dict type that simply removes all mechanisms to mutate the dictionary.

DictStringToStringSequenceField

Use this when you expect a dictionary of string keys with a sequence of strings values, such as {"k": ["v1", "v2"]}.

The user may use a normal Python dictionary in their BUILD file, and they may use a tuple, set, or list for the dictionary values. Pants will convert this into an instance of pants.util.frozendict.FrozenDict, which is a lightweight wrapper around the native dict type that simply removes all mechanisms to mutate the dictionary. Pants will also convert the values into immutable tuples, resulting in a type hint of FrozenDict[str, Tuple[str, ...]].

Field - the fallback class

If none of these templates work for you, you can subclass Field, which is the superclass of all of these templates.

You must give a type hint for value, define the classmethod compute_value, and either set required = True or define the class property default.

For example, we could define a StringField explicitly like this:

from typing import Optional

from pants.engine.addresses import Address
from pants.engine.target import Field, InvalidFieldTypeException


class VersionField(Field):
alias = "version"
value: Optional[str]
default = None
help = "The version to build with."

@classmethod
def compute_value(
cls, raw_value: Optional[str], *, address: Address
) -> Optional[str]:
value_or_default = super().compute_value(raw_value, address=address)
if value_or_default is not None and not isinstance(value, str):
# A helper exception message to generate nice error messages
# automatically. You can use another exception if you prefer.
raise InvalidFieldTypeException(
address, cls.alias, raw_value, expected_type="a string",
)
return value_or_default
Asking for help

Have a tricky field you're trying to write? We would love to help! See Getting Help.

Examples

plugins/target_types.py
from typing import Optional

from pants.engine.target import (
BoolField,
IntField,
InvalidFieldException,
MultipleSourcesField,
StringField
)


class FortranVersion(StringField):
alias = "fortran_version"
required = True
valid_choices = ("f95", "f98")
help = "Which version of Fortran should this use?"


class CompressToggle(BoolField):
alias = "compress"
default = False
help = "Whether to compress the generated file."


class UploadTimeout(IntField):
alias = "upload_timeout"
default = 100
help = (
"How long to upload (in seconds) before timing out.\n\n"
"This must be between 10 and 300 seconds."
)

@classmethod
def compute_value(
cls, raw_value: Optional[int], *, address: Address
) -> int:
value_or_default = super().compute_value(raw_value, address=address)
if value_or_default < 10 or value_or_default > 300:
raise InvalidFieldException(
f"The {repr(cls.alias)} field in target {address} must "
f"be between 10 and 300, but was {value_or_default}."
)
return value_or_default


# Example of subclassing an existing field.
# We don't need to define `alias = sources` because the
# parent class does this already.
class FortranSources(MultipleSourcesField):
default = ("*.f95",)