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cc: <@U02LHPNK4HW> thanks for you blog post, this is really helpful!
i am implementing something similar in python and having these typing issues, not sure if you have any idea on this?

I think you might be interested in pydantic (<https://pydantic-docs.helpmanual.io>)

I use it in most of my python project, including pulumi.

```class Team(BaseModel):
  name: str
  slug: str
  description: str
  parent_team_id: Optional[int]
  subteams: Optional[List["Team"]]

team = Team.parse_obj(your_python_dict)```

+ small suggestion (ofc that depends on your usecase), sometimes it’s easier to deal with empty list instead of optional lists:
```subteams: List["Team"] = []```
vs
```subteams: Optional[List["Team"]]```
Ensure that you really want to have an optional here :slightly_smiling_face:.

+ think about joining <#CDE799L1M|> channel on this Slack

Just curious. From OP post there is nothing about Pulumi itself and even Python code does not look like resources in Pulumi. Why the question is here?

I assumed OP wanted to read some structured stack config and needed to find a robust solution in python. At least, that’s where I use pydantic in my pulumi projects.

thanks very much! `pydantic` solved my problem nicely!!:+1:

yeah, using empty list makes things easier but dataclass has limitation that you can't assign an mutable empty list to a field. but now i don't worry about it since i switch to use pydantic

hi `sergei`: one key benefit of pulumi is to have proper typing and ide prompt. something that's easy in golang or typescript, may need some extra research/work in python. asking here since i was wondering how other folks workaround in their pulumi project.
<#CDE799L1M|> is definitely a good place to ask!

<@U022MC9A3A7> technically, you can assign empty list to a dataclass field, it’s just not that straightforward (because it’s mutable as you said):
```@dataclass
class Team:
    subteams: List["Team"] = field(default_factory=lambda: [])
    ...```

hi friends - just got back from holiday and I'm so glad you all found something that works! :tada: