Porting Python 2 Code to Python 3

Abstract

With Python 3 being the future of Python while Python 2 is still in active use, it is good to have your project available for both major releases of Python. This guide is meant to help you figure out how best to support both Python 2 & 3 simultaneously.

If you are looking to port an extension module instead of pure Python code, please see :ref:`cporting-howto`.

If you would like to read one core Python developer's take on why Python 3 came into existence, you can read Nick Coghlan's Why Python 3 exists.

For help with porting, you can email the The Short Explanation

To make your project be single-source Python 2/3 compatible, the basic steps are:

1. Only worry about supporting Python 2.7
2. Make sure you have good test coverage (Futurize (or Pylint to help make sure you don't regress on your Python 3 support (pip install pylint)
3. Use tox can help test against multiple versions of Python; pip install tox)
4. Consider using optional static type checking to make sure your type usage works in both Python 2 & 3 (e.g. use Details

   A key point about supporting Python 2 & 3 simultaneously is that you can start today! Even if your dependencies are not supporting Python 3 yet that does not mean you can't modernize your code now to support Python 3. Most changes required to support Python 3 lead to cleaner code using newer practices even in Python 2 code.

   Another key point is that modernizing your Python 2 code to also support Python 3 is largely automated for you. While you might have to make some API decisions thanks to Python 3 clarifying text data versus binary data, the lower-level work is now mostly done for you and thus can at least benefit from the automated changes immediately.

   Keep those key points in mind while you read on about the details of porting your code to support Python 2 & 3 simultaneously.

   Drop support for Python 2.6 and older

   While you can make Python 2.5 work with Python 3, it is much easier if you only have to work with Python 2.7. If dropping Python 2.5 is not an option then the Pylint), and this will become more commonplace as time goes on. It will simply be easier for you if you only support the versions of Python that you have to support.

   Make sure you specify the proper version support in your setup.py file

   In your setup.py file you should have the proper Have good test coverage

   Once you have your code supporting the oldest version of Python 2 you want it to, you will want to make sure your test suite has good coverage. A good rule of thumb is that if you want to be confident enough in your test suite that any failures that appear after having tools rewrite your code are actual bugs in the tools and not in your code. If you want a number to aim for, try to get over 80% coverage (and don't feel bad if you find it hard to get better than 90% coverage). If you don't already have a tool to measure test coverage then Learn the differences between Python 2 & 3

   Once you have your code well-tested you are ready to begin porting your code to Python 3! But to fully understand how your code is going to change and what you want to look out for while you code, you will want to learn what changes Python 3 makes in terms of Python 2. Typically the two best ways of doing that is reading the doc for each release of Python 3 and the cheat sheet from the Python-Future project.

   Update your code

   Once you feel like you know what is different in Python 3 compared to Python 2, it's time to update your code! You have a choice between two tools in porting your code automatically: Modernize. Which tool you choose will depend on how much like Python 3 you want your code to be. Modernize, on the other hand, is more conservative and targets a Python 2/3 subset of Python, directly relying on Division

   In Python 3, 5 / 2 == 2.5 and not 2; all division between int values result in a float. This change has actually been planned since Python 2.2 which was released in 2002. Since then users have been encouraged to add from __future__ import division to any and all files which use the / and // operators or to be running the interpreter with the -Q flag. If you have not been doing this then you will need to go through your code and do two things:

   1. Add from __future__ import division to your files
   2. Update any division operator as necessary to either use // to use floor division or continue using / and expect a float

   The reason that / isn't simply translated to // automatically is that if an object defines a __truediv__ method but not __floordiv__ then your code would begin to fail (e.g. a user-defined class that uses / to signify some operation but not // for the same thing or at all).

   Text versus binary data

   In Python 2 you could use the str type for both text and binary data. Unfortunately this confluence of two different concepts could lead to brittle code which sometimes worked for either kind of data, sometimes not. It also could lead to confusing APIs if people didn't explicitly state that something that accepted str accepted either text or binary data instead of one specific type. This complicated the situation especially for anyone supporting multiple languages as APIs wouldn't bother explicitly supporting unicode when they claimed text data support.

   To make the distinction between text and binary data clearer and more pronounced, Python 3 did what most languages created in the age of the internet have done and made text and binary data distinct types that cannot blindly be mixed together (Python predates widespread access to the internet). For any code that deals only with text or only binary data, this separation doesn't pose an issue. But for code that has to deal with both, it does mean you might have to now care about when you are using text compared to binary data, which is why this cannot be entirely automated.

   To start, you will need to decide which APIs take text and which take binary (it is highly recommended you don't design APIs that can take both due to the difficulty of keeping the code working; as stated earlier it is difficult to do well). In Python 2 this means making sure the APIs that take text can work with unicode and those that work with binary data work with the bytes type from Python 3 (which is a subset of str in Python 2 and acts as an alias for bytes type in Python 2). Usually the biggest issue is realizing which methods exist on which types in Python 2 & 3 simultaneously (for text that's unicode in Python 2 and str in Python 3, for binary that's str/bytes in Python 2 and bytes in Python 3). The following table lists the unique methods of each data type across Python 2 & 3 (e.g., the decode() method is usable on the equivalent binary data type in either Python 2 or 3, but it can't be used by the textual data type consistently between Python 2 and 3 because str in Python 3 doesn't have the method). Do note that as of Python 3.5 the __mod__ method was added to the bytes type.

   Text data Binary data
   decode
   encode
   format
   isdecimal
   isnumeric

   Making the distinction easier to handle can be accomplished by encoding and decoding between binary data and text at the edge of your code. This means that when you receive text in binary data, you should immediately decode it. And if your code needs to send text as binary data then encode it as late as possible. This allows your code to work with only text internally and thus eliminates having to keep track of what type of data you are working with.

   The next issue is making sure you know whether the string literals in your code represent text or binary data. You should add a b prefix to any literal that presents binary data. For text you should add a u prefix to the text literal. (there is a :mod:`__future__` import to force all unspecified literals to be Unicode, but usage has shown it isn't as effective as adding a b or u prefix to all literals explicitly)

   As part of this dichotomy you also need to be careful about opening files. Unless you have been working on Windows, there is a chance you have not always bothered to add the b mode when opening a binary file (e.g., rb for binary reading). Under Python 3, binary files and text files are clearly distinct and mutually incompatible; see the :mod:`io` module for details. Therefore, you must make a decision of whether a file will be used for binary access (allowing binary data to be read and/or written) or textual access (allowing text data to be read and/or written). You should also use :func:`io.open` for opening files instead of the built-in :func:`open` function as the :mod:`io` module is consistent from Python 2 to 3 while the built-in :func:`open` function is not (in Python 3 it's actually :func:`io.open`). Do not bother with the outdated practice of using :func:`codecs.open` as that's only necessary for keeping compatibility with Python 2.5.

   The constructors of both str and bytes have different semantics for the same arguments between Python 2 & 3. Passing an integer to bytes in Python 2 will give you the string representation of the integer: bytes(3) == '3'. But in Python 3, an integer argument to bytes will give you a bytes object as long as the integer specified, filled with null bytes: bytes(3) == b'\x00\x00\x00'. A similar worry is necessary when passing a bytes object to str. In Python 2 you just get the bytes object back: str(b'3') == b'3'. But in Python 3 you get the string representation of the bytes object: str(b'3') == "b'3'".

   Finally, the indexing of binary data requires careful handling (slicing does not require any special handling). In Python 2, b'123'[1] == b'2' while in Python 3 b'123'[1] == 50. Because binary data is simply a collection of binary numbers, Python 3 returns the integer value for the byte you index on. But in Python 2 because bytes == str, indexing returns a one-item slice of bytes. The :func:`io.open` and make sure to specify the b mode when appropriate

5. Be careful when indexing into binary data

Use feature detection instead of version detection

Inevitably you will have code that has to choose what to do based on what version of Python is running. The best way to do this is with feature detection of whether the version of Python you're running under supports what you need. If for some reason that doesn't work then you should make the version check be against Python 2 and not Python 3. To help explain this, let's look at an example.

Let's pretend that you need access to a feature of importlib2 on PyPI. You might be tempted to write code to access e.g. the importlib.abc module by doing the following:

import sys

if sys.version_info[0] == 3:
 from importlib import abc
else:
 from importlib2 import abc

The problem with this code is what happens when Python 4 comes out? It would be better to treat Python 2 as the exceptional case instead of Python 3 and assume that future Python versions will be more compatible with Python 3 than Python 2:

import sys

if sys.version_info[0] > 2:
 from importlib import abc
else:
 from importlib2 import abc

The best solution, though, is to do no version detection at all and instead rely on feature detection. That avoids any potential issues of getting the version detection wrong and helps keep you future-compatible:

try:
 from importlib import abc
except ImportError:
 from importlib2 import abc

Prevent compatibility regressions

Once you have fully translated your code to be compatible with Python 3, you will want to make sure your code doesn't regress and stop working under Python 3. This is especially true if you have a dependency which is blocking you from actually running under Python 3 at the moment.

To help with staying compatible, any new modules you create should have at least the following block of code at the top of it:

from __future__ import absolute_import
from __future__ import division
from __future__ import print_function

You can also run Python 2 with the -3 flag to be warned about various compatibility issues your code triggers during execution. If you turn warnings into errors with -Werror then you can make sure that you don't accidentally miss a warning.

You can also use the Modernize or Check which dependencies block your transition

After you have made your code compatible with Python 3 you should begin to care about whether your dependencies have also been ported. The https://caniusepython3.com.

The project also provides code which you can integrate into your test suite so that you will have a failing test when you no longer have dependencies blocking you from using Python 3. This allows you to avoid having to manually check your dependencies and to be notified quickly when you can start running on Python 3.

Update your setup.py file to denote Python 3 compatibility

Once your code works under Python 3, you should update the classifiers in your setup.py to contain Programming Language :: Python :: 3 and to not specify sole Python 2 support. This will tell anyone using your code that you support Python 2 and 3. Ideally you will also want to add classifiers for each major/minor version of Python you now support.

Use continuous integration to stay compatible

Once you are able to fully run under Python 3 you will want to make sure your code always works under both Python 2 & 3. Probably the best tool for running your tests under multiple Python interpreters is Consider using optional static type checking

Another way to help port your code is to use a static type checker like pytype on your code. These tools can be used to analyze your code as if it's being run under Python 2, then you can run the tool a second time as if your code is running under Python 3. By running a static type checker twice like this you can discover if you're e.g. misusing binary data type in one version of Python compared to another. If you add optional type hints to your code you can also explicitly state whether your APIs use textual or binary data, helping to make sure everything functions as expected in both versions of Python.

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