Turn Your Python Function into a Decorator with One Line of Code

A new way to write shorter, clearer, and more readable Python decorators that also act as a context manager

Decorating made easier (image by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels)

Do you want to write a decorator but can’t remember the syntax? Decorators have a pretty difficult syntax that involves a lot of boilerplate code. In this article we’ll demonstrate a simpler way of writing decorators. This new way will be much shorter, clearer, and more readable. Let’s code!

The default way to create a decorator

The code below is the default way to create a decorator. It times how long a decorated function runs. Check out this article for a deep dive in decorators.

def timer(name:str) -> Callable:
    def decorator(func:Callable) -> Callable:
        @wraps(func)
        def decorator_implementation(*args, **kwargs):
            try:
                print(f"TIMER:   {name} start")
                strt = time.perf_counter()
                return func(*args, **kwargs)
            finally:
                print(f"TIMER:   {name} finished in {time.perf_counter() - strt}")
        return decorator_implementation
    return decorator

This way we can use our code like this:

@timer(name="test")
def…