Not understanding the current way of handling draccus.load

[IrvingF7]

Thank you for this excellent project!

My understanding is that we can use draccus.load to load a local yaml/json file to overwrite some dataclass.

However, if we see the draccus.load defined here, we see that

def load(t: Type[Dataclass], stream):
    dictionary = load_config(stream)
    return decode(t, dictionary)

def load_config(stream, *, file=None):
    if file is not None:
        fpath = str(file)
        if fpath.endswith(".toml"):
            with config_type("toml"):
                return load_config(stream)
        elif fpath.endswith(".json"):
            with config_type("json"):
                return load_config(stream)
        elif fpath.endswith(".yaml") or fpath.endswith(".yml"):
            with config_type("yaml"):
                return load_config(stream)
    parser = Options.get_config_type().value
    return parser.load_config(stream)

We see that the load function does not pass a file into the load_config function, which would result in load_config processing the stream as a str, not a file stream.

The error message looks like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\train.py", line 151, in <module>
    main()
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\train.py", line 148, in main
    train_cfg = draccus.load(TrainConfig, train_cfg.model_cfg_path)
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\.venv\lib\site-packages\draccus\cfgparsing.py", line 38, in load
    return decode(t, dictionary)
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\.venv\lib\site-packages\draccus\parsers\registry_utils.py", line 78, in wrapper
    return base_func(*args, **kw)
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\.venv\lib\site-packages\draccus\parsers\decoding.py", line 48, in decode
    return get_decoding_fn(cls)(raw_value, ())  # type: ignore
  File "{MYPATH}\draccus_check\.venv\lib\site-packages\draccus\parsers\decoding.py", line 109, in decode_dataclass
    obj_dict: Dict[str, Any] = d.copy()
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'copy'

In argparsing.py, this is handled by first open the file stream

if config_path is not None:
    with open(config_path, "r") as f:
        file_args = cfgparsing.load_config(f, file=config_path)

And in my own experiment, I was able to do

with open('config/train/freeze_vision_tower.yaml', "r") as f:
    train_cfg = draccus.load(TrainConfig, f)

with both json and yaml config file, and I was able to verify that load indeed overwrites default config settings.

So, do we want to update the documentation or maybe refactor the codebase a bit?

I am happy to open a pull request to work on whichever direction you see fit

[dlwh]

Yeah I think this is inherited behavior I don't love.

My hunch is we should be more pythonic and do draccus.load vs draccus.loads. wdyt?

[IrvingF7]

Yeah I think this is inherited behavior I don't love.

My hunch is we should be more pythonic and do draccus.load vs draccus.loads. wdyt?

Hi! Thanks for the reply.

By load vs. loads, do you mean something like this?

If so, I am happy to refactor the code and potentially work on the readme a bit to reflect the changes.

[dlwh]

Yeah I do, sorry for being obscure. I don't love that convention either, but it is very pythonic so it's probably the way to go.

I'd appreciate the PR, thank you!