AttributeError when handling Klaviyo API responses - inconsistent return types (object vs dict)

[juliocabrerizo]

Problem Description

We're encountering inconsistencies in the data type returned by the Klaviyo API client. At the beginning of the integration we are developing, the response is a Pydantic model object that can be accessed using dot notation (.attributes.updated), but now it's a dictionary that needs to be accessed using dictionary methods (.get("attributes", {}).get("updated")).

This inconsistency leads to AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'attributes' when our code expects an object but receives a dictionary.

Reproduction Steps

1. Make calls to the Klaviyo API (e.g., create_profile, update_profile, get_profiles)
2. Try to access response data with dot notation

Current Workaround

We've implemented a try/except pattern to handle both cases:

Object-style Response (Pydantic Model):

POST_PROFILE_RESPONSE = PostProfileResponse(
    data=PostProfileResponseData(
        type=ProfileEnum.PROFILE,
        id="01JM21MJPKEV69YZK25DG0WAOW",
        attributes=PostProfileResponseDataAttributes(
            email="example@example.com",
            phone_number="+12345678901",
            created=datetime(2025, 2, 14, 10, 56, 26, 837280, tzinfo=None),
            updated=datetime(2025, 2, 14, 10, 56, 26, 837311, tzinfo=None),
            # ...other attributes
        ),
        # ...other fields
    )
)

Dictionary-style Response:

response = [
    {
        "id": "01JM21MJPKEV69YZK25DG0WAOW",
        "attributes": {
            "email": "example@example.com",
            "phone_number": "+12345678901",
            "created": "2025-02-14T10:56:26.837280",
            "updated": "2025-02-14T10:56:26.837311",
            # ...other attributes
        },
        # ...other fields
    }
]

Request

Could you please:

1. Standardize the response format (either always return Pydantic models or always return dictionaries)
2. Document the expected response types for each API method
3. Provide a helper method to convert between the formats if both are needed for backward compatibility

Environment

• Klaviyo API client version: [17.0.0]

Thank you for your help!

[sanfordj]

Hello!

Apologies for the confusion. If you wish to use only dictionaries, you can pass an option for this when you initialize the API Client or to individual API calls.

Due to limitations of Pydantic, some of our API Objects can not be represented as Pydantic models. Those are documented here.

Missing from this documentation (will add imminently) is that if you request a sparse field set, the response will be a dictionary, because Pydantic will otherwise throw a type exception if other fields are missing.

example:

profile = self.client.Profiles.get_profile(id='<insert_profile_id>', fields_profile=['email', 'last_name'])
print(f"Type of response is: {type(profile)}")

# prints
# Type of response is: <class 'dict'>

General reading on Typed Responses in this SDK

Will you provide more specific code examples of your API calls? I would like to investigate if we're seeing expected behavior.