1. Introduction and Goals

Writing mapper methods between two similar dataclasses in Python is a tedious and error-prone task. This library dataclass-mapper should support developers, lighten their workload, and make the program safer.

1.1. Requirements Overview

Id	Requirement	Explanation
F1	Automapping identical fields	Fields with the same name are mapped per default.
F2	Configure field mapping	It’s possible to specify which source field is mapped to which target field.
F3	Recursive mappings	Recursive dataclasses (attributes are other dataclass objects) are mappable to other recursive dataclasses.
F4	Configure default values	It’s possible to specify which fields are initialized by their default values.
F5	Custom mapper functions	It’s possible to specify functions that produce the value for the target field.
F6	Extra context	It’s possible to mark some fields as extra and provide those infos directly during the mapping operation.
F7	Support other dataclasses libraries	It’s possible to map between different dataclass implementations (like dataclasses, pydantic).
F8	Mappings between enum types	It’s possible to specify mappings between two enum types.

1.1.1. Types of mapper checks

The following conditions must be checked and guaranteed by the library. If the mappers are not valid - according to these conditions - a nice exception must be thrown.

Id	Requirement	Explanation
C1	Correct field names	All mentioned fields must exist in the corresponding class.
C2	Fully initialized	All fields of the target class are initialized after a mapping.
C3	Matching types	Source and target fields must have the same types, or are mappable themselves.

1.2. Quality Goals

Id	Requirement	Explanation
Q1	Correct mapper functions	Library creates mappers that successfully convert one dataclass into another.
Q2	Type safety	The library guarantees that all field types of the mapped class are according to their dataclass description.
Q3	Speed	The generated mapper function should not be slower than a manual written mapper.
Q4	Easy syntax	The syntax should be easy understandable, even by people that are not familiar with the library.
Q5	Extensible	There are many different dataclass libraries (dataclasses, pydantic v1 and v2, attr, sqlalchemy, …) with different syntax and features. It should be possible to integrate new dataclass libraries to the dataclass-mapper library without having to rewrite a lot.

1.3. Stakeholders

Role/Name	Contact	Expectations
Python Software Engineer	using dataclasses	write mapper with less code and in a safer way