class `pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage` is mangling `Timestamps` into `DatetimeWithNanoseconds`

[lazarillo]

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Please run down the following list and make sure you've tried the usual "quick fixes":

• Search the issues already opened: https://github.com/googleapis/python-pubsub/issues
• Search StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-cloud-platform+python

If you are still having issues, please be sure to include as much information as possible:

Environment details

• OS type and version: Mac OS 15.3.1
• Python version: 3.11
• pip version: 25.0.1
• google-cloud-pubsub version: 2.23.0

Steps to reproduce

1. ?
2. ?

Code example

from google.protobuf.timestamp_pb2 import Timestamp
from <myprotobufpkg> import protoclass # Here just use *any `Message`* from any `_pb2.py` protobuf file.
from google.cloud import pubsub_v1
from queue import Queue

payload = protoclass()
publish_time = Timestamp()
pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage(data=payload.SerializeToString(), publish_time = publish_time)

queue = Queue()
message = pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message(message=pubsub_message, ack_id="whatever", delivery_attempt=2, request_queue=queue) # This will fail with wrong data type, see below

Stack trace

>>> message = pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message(message=pubsub_message, ack_id="whatever", delivery_attempt=2, request_queue=queue)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File ".../3.11/lib/python/site-packages/google/cloud/pubsub_v1/subscriber/message.py", line 141, in __init__
    message.publish_time.seconds + message.publish_time.nanos / 1e9,
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'DatetimeWithNanoseconds' object has no attribute 'seconds'. Did you mean: 'second'?

Further Details

As you can see above, somehow the pubsub_message object has altered the publish_time from a Timestamp() object to a DatetimeWithNanoseconds object.

If you step back, you can see this actually happens not when trying to create the Message object, but when successfully creating the PubsubMessage object:

>>> pubsub_message.publish_time
DatetimeWithNanoseconds(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
>>> type(pubsub_message.publish_time)
<class 'proto.datetime_helpers.DatetimeWithNanoseconds'>

Therefore, when the pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage object creation call properly receives a Timestamp object, it is mangling it into a DatetimeWithNanoseconds object, even though it both says that it creates a Timestamp object, and downstream usage like the call to pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message, expect it to populate a Timestamp object.

[parthea]

Thanks for reporting this issue, @lazarillo!

From

python-pubsub/google/cloud/pubsub_v1/subscriber/message.py

Lines 110 to 116 in 953ddb1

	Args:
	message (types.PubsubMessage._meta._pb):
	The message received from Pub/Sub. For performance reasons it should be
	the raw protobuf message normally wrapped by
	:class:`~pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage`. A raw message can be obtained
	from a :class:`~pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage` instance through the
	latter's ``._pb`` attribute.

, it appears there is a requirement that the value for the message argument of pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message be the raw protobuf message normally wrapped by :class:~pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage.

There is a note:

A raw message can be obtained from a  :class:`~pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage` instance through the latter's ``._pb`` attribute. 

Try

from google.protobuf.timestamp_pb2 import Timestamp
from google.type.decimal_pb2 import Decimal

from google.cloud import pubsub_v1
from queue import Queue

payload = Decimal()
publish_time = Timestamp()
pubsub_message = pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage(data=payload.SerializeToString(), publish_time = publish_time)

queue = Queue()
message = pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message(message=pubsub_message._pb, ack_id="whatever", delivery_attempt=2, request_queue=queue) # note `pubsub_message._pb` instead of `pubsub_message` to get the raw protobuf message 

My initial thought is that the documentation or error message could be improved. Alternatively, the code in google.cloud.pubsub_v1.subscriber.message.Message could be updated to also allow type google.cloud.pubsub_v1.types.PubsubMessage.