I need to mark routines as deprecated, but apparently there’s no standard library decorator for deprecation. I am aware of recipes for it and the warnings module, but my question is: why is there no standard library decorator for this (common) task ?

Additional question: are there standard decorators in the standard library at all ?

Here’s some snippet, modified from those cited by Leandro:

import warnings
import functools

def deprecated(func):
    """This is a decorator which can be used to mark functions
    as deprecated. It will result in a warning being emitted
    when the function is used."""
    @functools.wraps(func)
    def new_func(*args, **kwargs):
        warnings.simplefilter('always', DeprecationWarning)  # turn off filter
        warnings.warn("Call to deprecated function {}.".format(func.__name__),
                      category=DeprecationWarning,
                      stacklevel=2)
        warnings.simplefilter('default', DeprecationWarning)  # reset filter
        return func(*args, **kwargs)
    return new_func

# Examples

@deprecated
def some_old_function(x, y):
    return x + y

class SomeClass:
    @deprecated
    def some_old_method(self, x, y):
        return x + y

Because in some interpreters the first solution exposed (without filter handling) may result in a warning suppression.

Here is another solution:

This decorator (a decorator factory in fact) allow you to give a reason message. It is also more useful to help the developer to diagnose the problem by giving the source filename and line number.

EDIT: This code use Zero’s recommendation: it replace warnings.warn_explicit line by warnings.warn(msg, category=DeprecationWarning, stacklevel=2), which prints the function call site rather than the function definition site. It makes debugging easier.

EDIT2: This version allow the developper to specify an optional “reason” message.

import functools
import inspect
import warnings

string_types = (type(b''), type(u''))


def deprecated(reason):
    """
    This is a decorator which can be used to mark functions
    as deprecated. It will result in a warning being emitted
    when the function is used.
    """

    if isinstance(reason, string_types):

        # The @deprecated is used with a 'reason'.
        #
        # .. code-block:: python
        #
        #    @deprecated("please, use another function")
        #    def old_function(x, y):
        #      pass

        def decorator(func1):

            if inspect.isclass(func1):
                fmt1 = "Call to deprecated class {name} ({reason})."
            else:
                fmt1 = "Call to deprecated function {name} ({reason})."

            @functools.wraps(func1)
            def new_func1(*args, **kwargs):
                warnings.simplefilter('always', DeprecationWarning)
                warnings.warn(
                    fmt1.format(name=func1.__name__, reason=reason),
                    category=DeprecationWarning,
                    stacklevel=2
                )
                warnings.simplefilter('default', DeprecationWarning)
                return func1(*args, **kwargs)

            return new_func1

        return decorator

    elif inspect.isclass(reason) or inspect.isfunction(reason):

        # The @deprecated is used without any 'reason'.
        #
        # .. code-block:: python
        #
        #    @deprecated
        #    def old_function(x, y):
        #      pass

        func2 = reason

        if inspect.isclass(func2):
            fmt2 = "Call to deprecated class {name}."
        else:
            fmt2 = "Call to deprecated function {name}."

        @functools.wraps(func2)
        def new_func2(*args, **kwargs):
            warnings.simplefilter('always', DeprecationWarning)
            warnings.warn(
                fmt2.format(name=func2.__name__),
                category=DeprecationWarning,
                stacklevel=2
            )
            warnings.simplefilter('default', DeprecationWarning)
            return func2(*args, **kwargs)

        return new_func2

    else:
        raise TypeError(repr(type(reason)))

You can use this decorator for functions, methods and classes.

Here is a simple example:

@deprecated("use another function")
def some_old_function(x, y):
    return x + y


class SomeClass(object):
    @deprecated("use another method")
    def some_old_method(self, x, y):
        return x + y


@deprecated("use another class")
class SomeOldClass(object):
    pass


some_old_function(5, 3)
SomeClass().some_old_method(8, 9)
SomeOldClass()

You’ll get:

deprecated_example.py:59: DeprecationWarning: Call to deprecated function or method some_old_function (use another function).
  some_old_function(5, 3)
deprecated_example.py:60: DeprecationWarning: Call to deprecated function or method some_old_method (use another method).
  SomeClass().some_old_method(8, 9)
deprecated_example.py:61: DeprecationWarning: Call to deprecated class SomeOldClass (use another class).
  SomeOldClass()

EDIT3: This decorator is now part of the Deprecated library:

• Python package index (PyPi)
• GitHub website
• Read The Docs
• Twitter

New stable release v1.2.10 🎉

As muon suggested, you can install the deprecation package for this.

The deprecation library provides a deprecated decorator and a fail_if_not_removed decorator for your tests.

Installation

pip install deprecation

Example Usage

import deprecation

@deprecation.deprecated(deprecated_in="1.0", removed_in="2.0",
                        current_version=__version__,
                        details="Use the bar function instead")
def foo():
    """Do some stuff"""
    return 1

See http://deprecation.readthedocs.io/ for the full documentation.

I guess the reason is that Python code can’t be processed statically (as it done for C++ compilers), you can’t get warning about using some things before actually using it. I don’t think that it’s a good idea to spam user of your script with a bunch of messages “Warning: this developer of this script is using deprecated API”.

Update: but you can create decorator which will transform original function into another. New function will mark/check switch telling that this function was called already and will show message only on turning switch into on state. And/or at exit it may print list of all deprecated functions used in program.

You can create a utils file

import warnings

def deprecated(message):
  def deprecated_decorator(func):
      def deprecated_func(*args, **kwargs):
          warnings.warn("{} is a deprecated function. {}".format(func.__name__, message),
                        category=DeprecationWarning,
                        stacklevel=2)
          warnings.simplefilter('default', DeprecationWarning)
          return func(*args, **kwargs)
      return deprecated_func
  return deprecated_decorator

And then import the deprecation decorator as follows:

from .utils import deprecated

@deprecated("Use method yyy instead")
def some_method()"
 pass

UPDATE: I think is better, when we show DeprecationWarning only first time for each code line and when we can send some message:

import inspect
import traceback
import warnings
import functools

import time


def deprecated(message: str = ''):
    """
    This is a decorator which can be used to mark functions
    as deprecated. It will result in a warning being emitted
    when the function is used first time and filter is set for show DeprecationWarning.
    """
    def decorator_wrapper(func):
        @functools.wraps(func)
        def function_wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
            current_call_source = '|'.join(traceback.format_stack(inspect.currentframe()))
            if current_call_source not in function_wrapper.last_call_source:
                warnings.warn("Function {} is now deprecated! {}".format(func.__name__, message),
                              category=DeprecationWarning, stacklevel=2)
                function_wrapper.last_call_source.add(current_call_source)

            return func(*args, **kwargs)

        function_wrapper.last_call_source = set()

        return function_wrapper
    return decorator_wrapper


@deprecated('You must use my_func2!')
def my_func():
    time.sleep(.1)
    print('aaa')
    time.sleep(.1)


def my_func2():
    print('bbb')


warnings.simplefilter('always', DeprecationWarning)  # turn off filter
print('before cycle')
for i in range(5):
    my_func()
print('after cycle')
my_func()
my_func()
my_func()

Result:

before cycle
C:/Users/adr-0/OneDrive/Projects/Python/test/unit1.py:45: DeprecationWarning: Function my_func is now deprecated! You must use my_func2!
aaa
aaa
aaa
aaa
aaa
after cycle
C:/Users/adr-0/OneDrive/Projects/Python/test/unit1.py:47: DeprecationWarning: Function my_func is now deprecated! You must use my_func2!
aaa
C:/Users/adr-0/OneDrive/Projects/Python/test/unit1.py:48: DeprecationWarning: Function my_func is now deprecated! You must use my_func2!
aaa
C:/Users/adr-0/OneDrive/Projects/Python/test/unit1.py:49: DeprecationWarning: Function my_func is now deprecated! You must use my_func2!
aaa

Process finished with exit code 0

We can just click on the warning path and go to the line in PyCharm.

Augmenting this answer by Steven Vascellaro:

If you use Anaconda, first install deprecation package:

conda install -c conda-forge deprecation 

Then paste the following on the top of the file

import deprecation

@deprecation.deprecated(deprecated_in="1.0", removed_in="2.0",
                    current_version=__version__,
                    details="Use the bar function instead")
def foo():
    """Do some stuff"""
    return 1

See http://deprecation.readthedocs.io/ for the full documentation.