Typing stubs for Babel

2.11.0.15 · active · verified Sun Apr 12

types-babel provides PEP 561 type stubs for the babel package. It allows type-checking tools like MyPy, Pyright, and PyCharm to analyze code that uses the babel library. The current version is 2.11.0.15. As part of the Typeshed project, updates to these stubs are frequent, driven by community contributions and are released to PyPI up to once a day when changes are made.

Warnings

breaking The `babel` package itself now includes its own type annotations starting from version 2.12.1. If you are using `babel` version 2.12.1 or newer, you should uninstall `types-babel` to avoid conflicts and ensure accurate type checking, as the native types are preferred.
Fix: Uninstall `types-babel`: `pip uninstall types-babel`.
gotcha Version compatibility is crucial. The version number of `types-babel` (e.g., `2.11.0.x`) corresponds to the version of the `babel` runtime package it stubs (e.g., `babel==2.11.*`). Using mismatched versions can lead to incorrect or incomplete type checking results.
Fix: Ensure that the major and minor version of `types-babel` closely matches your installed `babel` package version (e.g., `types-babel==2.11.x` for `babel==2.11.y`).
gotcha `types-babel` is currently marked as a 'partial' stub package. This means that not all modules, classes, or functions within the `babel` library may have complete type annotations. Type checkers might infer `Any` for unannotated parts, potentially missing errors.
Fix: Refer to the typeshed repository for details on the completeness of stubs. Contributions to complete missing annotations are welcome in typeshed.
gotcha Typeshed, the source for `types-babel`, supports specific Python versions (currently 3.10 to 3.14). Ensure your Python environment is compatible with both the `types-babel` stubs and the `babel` runtime library. For example, `babel` 2.15 and newer requires Python 3.8 or newer.
Fix: Verify your Python version against the typeshed and `babel` documentation. Upgrade or downgrade your Python environment as necessary.

Install

pip install types-babel Install types-babel

Imports

format_date
```
from babel.dates import format_date
```
Type stubs are implicitly used by type checkers; you import symbols directly from the runtime library (babel), not from the types-babel package itself.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to use a function from the `babel` library (`format_date`) and implicitly leverage the type annotations provided by `types-babel` when running a type checker like MyPy. Ensure you have both `babel` and `mypy` installed. If your `babel` version is 2.12.1 or newer, `types-babel` is not needed.

from datetime import date
from babel.dates import format_date

def main():
    today = date(2026, 4, 12)
    # types-babel provides type information for functions like format_date
    formatted_today: str = format_date(today, locale='en_US')
    print(f"Today is: {formatted_today}")

    # Example of a type error (uncomment to see mypy in action):
    # invalid_type: int = format_date(today, locale='en_US')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

# To run type checking, install mypy and babel:
# pip install babel mypy
# Then, run: mypy your_script_name.py

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