decorator

Decorators for Humans

decorator Permissive license BSD-2-Clause Active v5.3.1 released 2026-05-18

Install

decorator on PyPI

pip

pip install decorator

uv

uv add decorator

poetry

poetry add decorator

Package facts

License	BSD-2-Clause (permissive)
Python support	supports the current Python release (>=3.8)
Install friction	low — pure-Python wheel
Runtime dependencies	none
Maintenance	actively maintained — 87 days since the last release
First released	2011-04-22
Popularity	one of the top 1,000 most-downloaded packages on PyPI (30-day window, as of 2026-08-13)
Known vulnerabilities	none known (OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-13)

Evidence: decorator-5.3.1-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: decorators

Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersNatural Language :: EnglishOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonTopic :: Software Development :: LibrariesTopic :: Utilities

About decorator

from the package's own PyPI description — quoted content, verbatim

Decorators for Humans

The goal of the decorator module is to make it easy to define signature-preserving function decorators and decorator factories. It also includes an implementation of multiple dispatch and other niceties (please check the docs). It is released under a two-clauses BSD license, i.e. basically you can do whatever you want with it but I am not responsible.

Installation

If you are lazy, just perform

$ pip install decorator

which will install just the module on your system.

If you prefer to install the full distribution from source, including the documentation, clone the GitHub repo or download the tarball, unpack it and run

$ pip install .

in the main directory, possibly as superuser.

.. _tarball: https://pypi.org/project/decorator/#files .. _GitHub repo: https://github.com/micheles/decorator

Testing

If you have the source code installation you can run the tests with

$ python tests/test.py -v

Notice that you may run into trouble if in your system there is an older version of the decorator module; in such a case remove the old version. It is safe even to copy the module decorator.py...

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AI interpretation — verify before relying

AI-generated interpretation of the package facts above; every digit, version, license, or vulnerability id it cites is grounded in the facts already shown on this page

Provides utilities for writing signature-preserving function decorators and decorator factories, including multiple dispatch support, without boilerplate.

Installs cleanly with no runtime dependencies and a pure-Python wheel. Actively maintained with a release 87 days ago; supports Python 3.8–3.14.

Released under BSD-2-Clause (permissive), allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions—attribution and liability disclaimer required.

Usage

pip install decorator

from decorator import decorator
import time

@decorator
def timing_wrapper(func, *args, **kw):
    t0 = time.time()
    result = func(*args, **kw)
    print(f'{func.__name__} took {time.time() - t0:.2f}s')
    return result

@timing_wrapper
def my_function():
    pass

Verdict: A mature, well-maintained library (Production/Stable, active, zero known vulnerabilities) that solves a real pain point in Python decorator writing. Low install friction, permissive license, and broad Python version support make it a safe, practical choice for projects needing cleaner decorator syntax.

Needs verification

Whether multiple dispatch implementation is feature-complete relative to dedicated dispatch libraries.
Performance characteristics compared to hand-written decorators or alternative decorator utilities.

signature-preserving decoratorsfunction decorator utilitiesdecorator factory helpersmultiple dispatch pythondecorator boilerplate reductionpreserve function signaturedecorator pattern library