TemplateCommand subclasses `handle` method typing is incorrect

[PedroPerpetua]

Bug report

What's wrong

The TemplateCommand class stub (django-stubs/core/management/templates.pyi) defines the handle command as follows:

def handle(self, app_or_project: str, name: str, target: str | None = ..., **options: Any) -> None: ...

We can see that in subclasses (startapp and startproject), Django actually does not follow the super's definition, instead manually parsing kwargs to pass into the super's method:

# django.core.management.commands.startapp
class Command(TemplateCommand):
    help = (
        "Creates a Django app directory structure for the given app name in "
        "the current directory or optionally in the given directory."
    )
    missing_args_message = "You must provide an application name."

    def handle(self, **options):
        app_name = options.pop("name")
        target = options.pop("directory")
        super().handle("app", app_name, target, **options)

How is that should be

This is an issue where Django itself is kinda violating the principles of inheritance by havind a different definition in the child class; however, I believe the stubs should still reflect this behaviour, and should define the class methods for the respective commands in the way they are actually used:

def handle(self, **options: Any) -> Optional[str]: ...

System information

• OS:
• python version: 3.11
• django version: 4.2.7
• mypy version: 1.6.1
• django-stubs version: 4.2.6
• django-stubs-ext version: 4.2.5

[intgr]

What problems does this cause, or what will improve if the args are removed?

I think this should be fixed by just making app_or_project and target keyword-only arguments (by adding a *, to signature), not removing the arguments. I don't think there are any downsides?

[PedroPerpetua]

What problems does this cause, or what will improve if the args are removed?

My current use case where I'm faced with this problem is that I'm overriding the startapp command to use, by default, a TEMPLATE_PATH that I provide:

# My custom startapp command
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Any, Optional
from django.conf import settings
from django.core.management.commands.startapp import Command as StartAppCommand


class Command(StartAppCommand):
    """Customize the StartAppCommand to use our custom app template by default."""

    TEMPLATE_PATH: Path = settings.BASE_DIR / "core" / "app_template"

    # https://github.com/typeddjango/django-stubs/issues/1820
    def handle(self, *args: Any, **options: Any) -> Optional[str]:  # type: ignore
        """Override the `handle` method to add the option "template" with our template if None were passed."""
        if options.get("template", None) is None:
            options["template"] = str(self.TEMPLATE_PATH)
        return super().handle(*args, **options)

[UnknownPlatypus]

I think this should be fixed by just making app_or_project and target keyword-only arguments (by adding a *, to signature), not removing the arguments. I don't think there are any downsides?

Django passe these arguments as non keyword args so that would be a bit weird to do that maybe ?

I feel like having the signature proposed above by @PedroPerpetua is more accurate and reflect more the actual django code ?

[intgr]

Django passe these arguments as non keyword args so that would be a bit weird to do that maybe ?

Yes my bad, I wasn't concentrating and I got multiple things mixed up there. 😅

[UnknownPlatypus]

Will submit a PR for this tonight, I was working on updating these a few days ago