PEP 712: Adding a "converter" parameter to dataclasses.field

PEPs
3

I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, but some differences between the @setattr approach and the bare function approach:

  • bare functions don’t accept self. Having self is useful in case you want your converter to access member variables or even class methods (which could be very useful).
  • bare functions specify all of the field attributes in one place rather than having extraneous methods laying around.
  • the setattr approach allows the converter to be overridden in a derived class without re-specifying the entire field.

I think we want to have access to self if possible.