The "Any" type is not very well documented in the Python documentation

[Shio Tse]

The only mention in the "Python Generated Code" page for the Any message type is here. It goes through the basic usage and showcases exactly one use of the Pack, Unpack and Is methods.

However, I see no mention of the type_url and name fields unless I go into the descriptor of the message in the REPL or I inspect the descriptor. The epydoc index does not contain any (heh) mention for Any either.

However, when I tried to search for the message type on Google, I found that the class was documented clearly for at least C# and Java.

Is there simply an oversight in not including google.protobuf.any_pb2 into the documentation?

Shio

[Hao Nguyen]

Any is a special type that contains a string type_url field and a bytes value field. However, you normally shouldn't touch those fields directly, but instead you should use Pack, Unpack and Is methods for your Any type. Those fields represent how the data is transferred over the wire, but not necessarily something that you would want to access as part of the API.