Dictify

Next

Dictify

Lightweight validation for Python mappings and JSON-like documents.

dictify is a lightweight validation library for standalone fields and mapping-shaped models. It is designed for small schema layers, partial validation, and annotation-first models with explicit dict-like behavior.

Why Dictify?

  • Validate a single value with Field(...) without defining a full model
  • Define annotation-first Model classes for dict-shaped documents
  • Keep mapping access and attribute access together
  • Handle unknown keys and public attributes explicitly with _strict
  • Convert back to plain Python data with dict(model) and model.dict()

Install

pip install dictify

Quick Example

from datetime import UTC, datetime
from typing import Annotated

from dictify import Field, Model


class Note(Model):
    title: Annotated[
        str,
        Field(required=True).verify(
            lambda value: len(value) <= 300,
            "Title must be 300 characters or fewer",
        ),
    ]
    content: Annotated[str, Field()]
    timestamp: Annotated[
        datetime,
        "creation time",
        Field(default=lambda: datetime.now(UTC)),
    ]

Create and update validated data:

note = Note(title="Dictify", content="dictify is easy")

note.content = "Updated content"
note["content"] = "Updated again"

# These raise Model.Error.
note.title = 0
note["title"] = 0

Strict Mode

Model is strict by default.

  • _strict=True rejects undeclared keys and undeclared public attributes
  • _strict=False stores undeclared keys and attributes as extra model data
note = Note({"title": "Dictify"}, _strict=False)

note.category = "docs"
assert note["category"] == "docs"
assert dict(note)["category"] == "docs"

Native Conversion

Use explicit conversion when you need plain Python data.

import json

note_dict = dict(note)        # shallow dict conversion
note_native = note.dict()     # recursive dict/list conversion
note_json = json.dumps(note.dict())

Guides

AI Skill