BUG: VSCode go to definition doesn't work with pandas.api.extensions.register_dataframe_accessor

[arnoldjames98]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pandas.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the main branch of pandas.

Reproducible Example

Create a pandas.api.extensions.register_dataframe_accessor, then when using try to command + click in VSCode to jump to the definition. Either no definition is found or it jumps to a file like series.pyi

Create a pandas.api.extensions.register_dataframe_accessor, then when using try to command + click in VSCode to jump to the definition. Either no definition is found or it jumps to a file like series.pyi

my_utils/my_accessor.py

import pandas as pd

@pd.api.extensions.register_dataframe_accessor("demo")
class DemoAccessor:
    def __init__(self, pandas_obj):
        self._obj = pandas_obj

    def say_hello(self):
        print("Hello from accessor!")

main.py

import pandas as pd
import sys
import importlib

# Ensure the path to the module is in sys.path
sys.path.append("my_utils")  # Adjust this path as needed

import my_accessor
importlib.reload(my_accessor)

# Create DataFrame and use accessor
df = pd.DataFrame({"A": [1, 2, 3]})
df.demo.say_hello()  # This runs fine, but "jump to definition" doesn't work

Issue Description

VSCode go to definition doesn't work with pandas.api.extensions.register_dataframe_accessor

Expected Behavior

I can jump to the definition when command clicking and see the documentation in VSCode

Installed Versions

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit : d9cdd2e
python : 3.11.6.final.0
python-bits : 64
OS : Darwin
OS-release : 24.3.0
Version : Darwin Kernel Version 24.3.0: Thu Jan 2 20:24:16 PST 2025; root:xnu-11215.81.4~3/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000
machine : x86_64
processor : i386
byteorder : little
LC_ALL : None
LANG : en_US.UTF-8
LOCALE : en_US.UTF-8

pandas : 2.2.2
numpy : 2.0.2
pytz : 2025.2
dateutil : 2.9.0.post0
setuptools : 80.7.1
pip : 25.1.1
Cython : None
pytest : None
hypothesis : None
sphinx : None
blosc : None
feather : None
xlsxwriter : None
lxml.etree : None
html5lib : None
pymysql : None
psycopg2 : None
jinja2 : 3.1.6
IPython : 7.34.0
pandas_datareader : None
adbc-driver-postgresql: None
adbc-driver-sqlite : None
bs4 : 4.13.4
bottleneck : None
dataframe-api-compat : None
fastparquet : None
fsspec : None
gcsfs : None
matplotlib : 3.10.0
numba : None
numexpr : None
odfpy : None
openpyxl : None
pandas_gbq : None
pyarrow : None
pyreadstat : None
python-calamine : None
pyxlsb : None
s3fs : None
scipy : 1.15.3
sqlalchemy : None
tables : None
tabulate : None
xarray : None
xlrd : None
zstandard : None
tzdata : 2025.2
qtpy : None
pyqt5 : None

[rhshadrach]

Thanks for the report. Further investigations are certainly welcome. If there is an adjustment pandas can make to improve this functionality and it isn't a heavy code change, then a PR is welcome as well. However I do not think we should leave issues for supporting various IDEs on the queue for the long term if there is no proposed fix. Marking as a closing candidate for now.

[iabhi4]

I looked into this a bit more to see if there's a clean way to get “Go to Definition” working in VSCode (Pylance) for @register_dataframe_accessor.

After trying things like __annotations__ and TYPE_CHECKING, what actually worked was:

Creating a subclass of DataFrame with the accessor annotated:

class DataFrameWithAccessor(pd.DataFrame):
    demo: DemoAccessor

Then doing a cast before usage:

df = pd.DataFrame({...})
df = cast(DataFrameWithAccessor, df)
df.demo.say_hello()

This makes Pylance resolve the method statically without needing anything from pandas itself. Might be worth dropping a line about this in the docs or a dev tip somewhere, happy to PR it if useful.

[mroeschke]

Agreed that pandas shouldn't necessarily be responsible for IDE specific feature support, so closing

[arnoldjames98]

For other with this problem, here's a link to another thread with the solution that worked for me: microsoft/pylance-release#7275.