Flows fail to take NamedTuple as a parameter

Description

NamedTuples are currently handled the same way as tuples when Prefect builds its context (and probably at other times), which is incorrect since a NamedTuple can’t be initialized like a normal tuple. It needs one argument per defined property instead all of the arguments in a list.

Where the error happens: https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/blob/cc2f4e16227d9f40c6aeace3bae887cc1fdc90f6/src/prefect/utilities/collections.py#L145-L177

Expected Behavior

It should initialize them properly using either the splat *[] or using the ._make([]) method of the NamedTuple object, or perhaps just not modify them at all (just return them raw on L177). I don’t know why things have to be transformed into dictionaries so don’t know what the right decision is.

Reproduction

from prefect import Flow, Parameter, task
from collections import namedtuple


@task
def printme(x):
    print(x)

with Flow('Test') as flow:
    myarg = Parameter('myarg')
    printme(myarg)

flow.run(myarg=namedtuple('MyObj', ['x', 'y'])(1, 2))

[fgblomqvist]

That’s what I suspected. In that case, I think the solution I proposed might be the right one. Nonetheless, lmk if you want help with a PR on this once you’ve made up your mind on how you want to fix it (whether that happens now or later).

[fgblomqvist]

I could probably use DotDict as a work-around in the meantime, yes, but long-term I still believe this should be fixed.

Since you still allow non-serialize-able objects to be passed in (e.g random classes) I’m confused as to why you’re even trying to break up/deep-serialize lists/tuples/sets to begin with? Are you trying to achieve a best-effort as-much-as-possible serialization? In that case, it seems like the solution is perhaps to do something like if type(obj) in ('list', 'tuple', 'set') instead, since that way you just won’t screw with custom types that inherit from those (I’m guessing NamedTuple isn’t the only one that would be problematic?). Or is there some Prefect Cloud criteria here that I’m missing?