Python interface validation

When I started working on update-manager I thought using zope.interface for my interfaces was a good idea, but soon realized that it lacked a way of actually validating a given interface against an implementation. The only thing it did was checking whether the implementation defined that it implements the interface.

Now, whilst writing some unit tests for update-manager I came up with a simple way of doing "real" validation, and I would like to share that Python code with you.

Firstly, I'd like to give you an overview of which checks my code carries out:

• Mandatory method (raises NotImplementedError in interface definition) is not implemented (also raises NotImplementedError in implementation)


• Optional or mandatory method is of correct type (static method versus instance method)


• Optional or mandatory method has a different signature (argument count is different)

I consider at least the first and last check viable for validation of an interface against its implementation. The second check I listed is not that useful, and may produce false positives when someone uses certain decorators, I did not carry out any tests on that myself though.

The code can be found in update-manager's repository (link) and (for now) is licensed under the GPLv2 or later. I am willing to distribute this code as a separate Python module (maybe under a more permissive license like the LGPL) if enough (let's say at least two) people are interested in it, so please let me know if you like it.

Apart from the code itself the unit tests in the file linked above should explain how this beast exactly works.

Happy hacking!