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advanced patterns When Using Type Hints with Async Functions in Python 3.10

👀 Views: 98 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-24
Python asyncio httpx type-hints

Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I'm working with unexpected behavior when trying to use type hints with async functions in Python 3.10. I have an async function that fetches data from an API and is supposed to return a list of dictionaries. However, when I use type hints to specify the return type, I get a type behavior during runtime. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```python from typing import List, Dict import httpx async def fetch_data() -> List[Dict[str, str]]: async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client: response = await client.get('https://api.example.com/data') return response.json() # Assuming this returns a list of dictionaries ``` When I run my code, I'm getting the following behavior: ``` TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable ``` This suggests that `response.json()` might not be returning what I expect. To debug, I added print statements and confirmed that `response.json()` returns `None`, which leads me to believe that the API response might not be as expected or there's an scenario with type hinting. I've checked the API and it does return a valid JSON response. I've also tried removing the type hints, and the code executes without behavior, but I want to ensure I'm using them correctly. Is there a specific way to handle type hints with async functions in Python 3.10, especially when dealing with external API calls? I've also tried using `Optional` but it didn't resolve the scenario. Any insights would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is macOS.