response.text is no longer directly accessible - TypeError: argument of type 'Part' is not iterable

[mitchspano]

Description of the bug:

Accessing the property response.text no longer works.

genai.configure(api_key = gcp_key)
model = genai.GenerativeModel("gemini-pro")
response = model.generate_content(prompt)

print(str(response.text)
# TypeError: argument of type 'Part' is not iterable
# google/generativeai/types/generation_types.py
# line 327, in text
#    if len(parts) != 1 or "text" not in parts[0]:

As a workaround, I can get the detail with response.candidates[0].content.parts[0].text, but this seems like it might be a breaking change?

Actual vs expected behavior:

I should be able to reference response.text directly.

Any other information you'd like to share?

NOTE: I am using the internal Google3 version of this SDK - see go/generative-ai-python-sdk-response-type-issue for the exact line internally. There seems to be a discrepancy between Google3 and GitHub - this is the line in the GitHub repo.

Feel free to reach out to me internally - mitchspano@

[laxman-munigala]

Any update on this pls. Does this break all the python examples?

[MarkDaoust]

The public python examples are okay, this is a google-internal problem.

@mitchspano I've added you to an email thread titled "Checking for oneof field presence in UPB proto messages", where we're discussing the cause of this.

[laxman-munigala]

Thanks @MarkDaoust .. I am getting below error using langchain aswell as google-cloud-aiplatform. Am i missing something.

[MarkDaoust]

Interesting. Thanks for the update. Reopened.

Internally it has something to do with switching to upb protos, IDK if it's the same problem here.

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/upb?tab=readme-ov-file
https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/tree/main/upb

proto-plus (used by these libraries)depends on an older version of protobuf (<5, when latest is 5.26.1), but upgrading to 5.26 doesn't cause this error.

Can ou post a "pip freeze | grep proto"?

[laxman-munigala]

[MarkDaoust]

Just with the python versions, using this SDK I can't reproduce that.

Can you reproduce the error in Colab, for example, so we can replicate it and share with the owners?

[laxman-munigala]

Used below to create my environment where i see the issue.

name: python-test
channels:

• defaults
  dependencies:
• python
• pip=23.3
• requests=2.31
• pandas=2.2
• plotly=5.19
• sqlalchemy=2.0
• streamlit=1.32
• fastapi=0.103
• uvicorn=0.20
• ipykernel=6.28
• pip:
  • duckdb == 0.10
  • google-cloud-aiplatform
  • langchain
  • langchain-google-vertexai

[sakher]

The issue happens when parts is a protobuf object and not a dict - the check needs to be replaced with:

        if len(parts) != 1 or not hasattr(parts[0], "text"):

Instead of:

        if len(parts) != 1 or "text" not in parts[0]:

I am not sure if it will resolve all issues or if it needs to be a more comprehensive check, but it was causing issues for me and I ended up using parts[0].text directly to avoid similar issues.

generative-ai-python/google/generativeai/types/generation_types.py

Line 416 in 419a7ce

if len(parts) != 1 or "text" not in parts[0]:

[sakher]

For some reason - I was getting this error consistently yesterday, but can't reproduce today!!!

[MarkDaoust]

@sakher, you do have a point, hasattr(parts[0], "text") would be more robust here. But the problem is that "text" in parts[0] is supposed to work for the proto-plus based proto classes. This library is only setup to work with those. Switching to hasattr will just mask this error and move the problem somewhere else. There are a lot of isinstance checks that will go the wrong way.

[sakher]

You guys know better, I haven't dug deep into it - but when the error happens (sporadically) from some debugging, the type of parts was:
google.protobuf.pyext._message.RepeatedCompositeContainer

However, in some cases, the error doesn't happen, and the type of parts seems to be different in such cases:
proto.marshal.collections.repeated.RepeatedComposite

[parrt]

(@MarkDaoust see me inside corp as parrt)

I'm also seeing this with anaconda and mac os (Sonoma 14.5) on apple silicon via jupyter lab.

TypeError: argument of type 'Part' is not iterable

Snippet:

import google.generativeai as genai
genai.configure(api_key='SECRET API KEY')

code = """
int i = 34;
"""
model = genai.GenerativeModel(model_name="gemini-1.5-flash")
response = model.generate_content([
"""You are an expert Java programmer.
Here is some Java code that I would like you to analyze.""", code])
print(response.text)

Oddly however, the response object does appear to have the appropriate elements:

GenerateContentResponse(
    done=True,
    iterator=None,
    result=protos.GenerateContentResponse({
      "candidates": [
        {
          "content": {
            "parts": [
              {
                "text": "This code snippet is a simple declaration
...
)

For example the following evaluates fine: response.candidates[0].content.parts[0].text:

"This code snippet is a simple declaration ...

Info:

$ conda list python
# packages in environment at /Users/parrt/opt/anaconda3:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
antlr4-python3-runtime    4.12.0                   pypi_0    pypi
brotli-python             1.0.9            py39hcec6c5f_8  
google-api-python-client  2.133.0                  pypi_0    pypi
ipython                   8.15.0           py39hecd8cb5_0  
ipython_genutils          0.2.0              pyhd3eb1b0_1  
msgpack-python            1.0.3            py39haf03e11_0  
python                    3.9.19               h5ee71fb_1  
python-dateutil           2.9.0post0       py39hecd8cb5_2  
python-fastjsonschema     2.16.2           py39hecd8cb5_0  
python-graphviz           0.20.1                   pypi_0    pypi
python-libarchive-c       2.9                pyhd3eb1b0_1  
python-lmdb               1.4.1            py39hcec6c5f_0  
python-lsp-black          2.0.0            py39hecd8cb5_0  
python-lsp-jsonrpc        1.1.2              pyhd3eb1b0_0  
python-lsp-server         1.10.0           py39hecd8cb5_0  
python-slugify            5.0.2              pyhd3eb1b0_0  
python-snappy             0.6.1            py39hcec6c5f_0  
python.app                3                py39hca72f7f_0  
python_abi                3.9                      2_cp39    conda-forge
$ conda list anaconda
# packages in environment at /Users/parrt/opt/anaconda3:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
_anaconda_depends         2022.05                  py39_0  
anaconda                  custom                   py39_2  
anaconda-anon-usage       0.4.4            py39hfd8fc91_0  
anaconda-client           1.12.3           py39hecd8cb5_0  
anaconda-navigator        2.1.4            py39hecd8cb5_0  
anaconda-project          0.11.1           py39hecd8cb5_0  

My environment was old so I whacked anaconda and reinstalled everything. I get the same problem still.

$ conda list python
# packages in environment at /Users/parrt/anaconda3:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
brotli-python             1.0.9           py312h313beb8_8  
gitpython                 3.1.37          py312hca03da5_0  
google-api-python-client  2.135.0                  pypi_0    pypi
ipython                   8.25.0          py312hca03da5_0  
ipython_genutils          0.2.0              pyhd3eb1b0_1  
msgpack-python            1.0.3           py312h48ca7d4_0  
python                    3.12.4               h99e199e_1  
python-dateutil           2.9.0post0      py312hca03da5_2  
python-dotenv             0.21.0          py312hca03da5_0  
python-fastjsonschema     2.16.2          py312hca03da5_0  
python-json-logger        2.0.7           py312hca03da5_0  
python-libarchive-c       2.9                pyhd3eb1b0_1  
python-lmdb               1.4.1           py312h313beb8_0  
python-lsp-black          2.0.0           py312hca03da5_0  
python-lsp-jsonrpc        1.1.2              pyhd3eb1b0_0  
python-lsp-server         1.10.0          py312hca03da5_0  
python-slugify            5.0.2              pyhd3eb1b0_0  
python-snappy             0.6.1           py312h313beb8_0  
python-tzdata             2023.3             pyhd3eb1b0_0  
python.app                3               py312h80987f9_0  
$ conda list anaconda
# packages in environment at /Users/parrt/anaconda3:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
_anaconda_depends         2024.06         py312_openblas_2  
anaconda-anon-usage       0.4.4           py312hd6b623d_100  
anaconda-catalogs         0.2.0           py312hca03da5_1  
anaconda-client           1.12.3          py312hca03da5_0  
anaconda-cloud-auth       0.5.1           py312hca03da5_0  
anaconda-navigator        2.6.0           py312hca03da5_0  
anaconda-project          0.11.1          py312hca03da5_0  

[MarkDaoust]

I think this is the fix we need:
googleapis/proto-plus-python#471