I have a class as follows:
class A:
def __init__(self):
pass
def add_attr(self, name):
setattr(self, name, 'something')
How do I define custom setter, getter for self.name? I cannot use __setattr__, __getattribute__ because that will change the behaviour of add_attr too.
EDIT: the users of this class will add arbitrary number of attributes with arbitrary names:
a = A()
a.add_attr('attr1')
a.add_attr('attr2')
I want custom behavior for only these user added attributes.
Building off #Devesh Kumar Singh’s answer, I would implement it in some way like this:
class A:
def __init__(self):
self.attrs = {}
def __setattr__(self, key, value):
if key in self.attrs:
self.set_attr(key, value)
else:
object.__setattr__(self, key, value)
def __getattribute__(self, key):
if key in self.__dict__.get(attrs, {}):
return self.__dict__['get_attr'](self, key)
return object.__getattribute__(self, key)
def get_attr(self, key):
r = self.attrs[key]
# logic
return r
def set_attr(self, key, value):
# logic
self.attrs[key] = value
def add_attr(self, key, value=None):
self.attrs[key] = value
add_attr is only used to initialise the variable the first time. You could also edit __setattr__ to set all new attributes in the self.attrs rather than self.__dict__
Custom getter and setter logic? That's what a property is made for. Usually these are used to magically mask function calls and make them look like attribute access
class MyDoubler(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self._x = x
#property
def x(self):
return x * 2
#x.setter
def x(self, value):
self._x = value
>>> md = MyDoubler(10)
>>> md.x
20
>>> md.x = 20
>>> md.x
40
>>> md._x
20
But there's no rule saying you can't abuse that power to add custom behavior to your getters and setters.
class A(object):
def __init__(self):
pass
#staticmethod
def default_getter_factory(name):
def default_getter(self):
return self.name
return default_getter
#staticmethod
def default_setter_factory(name):
def default_setter(self, value):
setattr(self, name, value)
return default_setter
def add_attr(self, name, getterfactory=None, setterfactory=None):
private_name = f"_{name}"
if getterfactory is None:
getterfactory = self.__class__.default_getter_factory
if setterfactory is None:
setterfactory = self.__class__.default_setter_factory
getter, setter = getterfactory(private_name), setterfactory(private_name)
getter = property(getter)
setattr(self.__class__, name, getter)
setattr(self.__class__, name, getter.setter(setter))
That said this is all a bit silly, and chances are that whatever it is you're trying to do is a thing that shouldn't be done. Dynamic programming is all well and good, but if I were to review code that did this, I would think very long and hard about alternative solutions before approving it. This reeks of technical debt to me.
One possibility I could think of is to have a dictionary of dynamic attributes, and set and get the dynamic attributes using the dictionary
class A:
def __init__(self):
#Dictionary of attributes
self.attrs = {}
#Set attribute
def set_attr(self, name):
self.attrs[name] = 'something'
#Get attribute
def get_attr(self, name):
return self.attrs.get(name)
a = A()
a.set_attr('var')
print(a.get_attr('var'))
The output will be something
Or an alternate is to use property decorator to add arguments explicitly outside the class, as described here
class A:
def __init__(self):
pass
a = A()
#Add attributes via property decorator
a.attr_1 = property(lambda self: self.attr_1)
a.attr_2 = property(lambda self: self.attr_2)
#Assign them values and print them
a.attr_1 = 4
a.attr_2 = 6
print(a.attr_1, a.attr_2)
The output will be 4 6
I am gonna answer my own question just for reference. This is based on others' answers here. The idea is to use default __setattr__ and __getattribute__ on attributes not added through add_attr.
class A:
def __init__(self):
self.attrs = {}
def add_attr(self, name):
self.attrs[name] = 'something'
def __getattribute__(self, name):
try:
object.__getattribute__(self, 'attrs')[name] # valid only if added by user
# custom logic and return
except (KeyError, AttributeError):
return object.__getattribute__(self, name)
def __setattr__(self, name, val):
# similar to __getattribute__
Related
I can't set the right properties of an instance when setting their attributes via setattr in a factory method.
Given the following code where data is a simple dict containing e.g. { "age": "64", ...}
def factory(data):
obj = MyClass()
for k, v in data.items():
setattr(obj, k, v)
return obj
class MyClass(object):
def __init__(self):
self._age = None
# more...
#property
def age(self):
return self._age
#age.setter
def age(self, value):
some_validation(value)
self._age = value
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
object.__setattr__(self, name, value)
def __getitem__(self, item):
return self.__dict__.get(item, None)
def __getattr__(self, item):
self.__dict__[item] = None
return None
def __str__(self):
return json.dumps(self, default=lambda o: o.__dict__)
c = factory(data)
print(c)
I always get the following output when printing the created object:
{"_age": "64", ...}
But I need to have
{"age": "64", ...}
Why does the setattr method assign the leading underscore?
Some of the things you are trying to achieve get mixed up, like wanting to print __dict__ for a readable representation, but using private attributes for properties. Let's start from scratch and see how we can implement your class correctly.
You are trying to implement a class which attributes can be accessed both as keys and attributes. That is fine and can be accomplished in a more concise way.
class MyClass:
...
def __getitem__(self, item):
return self.__getattribute__(item)
def __setitem__(self, key, value):
return self.__setattr__(key, value)
You also want None to be returned when an attribute does not exist. This is covered by __getattr__ which is called exactly when an attribute does not exist.
def __getattr__(self, _):
return None
Then you want to add some validation to some attributes with property. It is indeed the correct way to proceed.
#property
def age(self):
return self._age
#age.setter
def age(self, value):
# some validation here
self._age = value
And finally you want to be able to have a nice string representation of your instance. We have to be careful for that since we had to add some private attributes that we do not want to print.
What we are going to do is implement a method keys to allow casting to dict. This method will only return keys for attributes which are not private nor methods.
def keys(self):
return [k for k in dir(self) if not k.startswith('_') and not callable(self[k])]
def __str__(self):
return json.dumps(dict(self))
This does the right thing.
obj = MyClass()
obj.age = 3
print(obj)
# prints: {"age": 3}
I have a class that contains a dictionary, i use __getattr__(key) to get nicer access to the dictionary[key] now i would like to be able to set things in the dictionary with the same access style.
Class foo(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.props = {"name":name}
def __getattr__(self, attribute):
return self.props[attribute]
This is so i can access it in this way
f = foo("test")
print f.name
I would like the ability to set the attributes aswell, however using setattr is proving problematic due to it being called before anything else fails. Is there a way to make it act like getattr?
__setattr__ is fine, but you need to protect yourself from case when __setattr__ is called before self.props is set (RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded)
class foo(object):
# List of properties which are not stored in the props dict
__slots__ = ('props', 'other_property')
def __init__(self, name):
self.props = {"name":name}
self.other_property = 2
def __getattr__(self, attribute):
return self.props[attribute]
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
if name in self.__slots__:
super(foo, self).__setattr__(name, value)
else:
self.props[name] = value
f = foo("name")
print f.name
f.value = 2
f.name = "TEST"
print f.value
print f.props
In my code, I have a data store with multiple variables set to instances of a class similar to that below. (The reason is that this Interval class has lots of operator overriding functions).
class Interval(object):
def __init__(self, value):
self.value = value
data_store.a = Interval(1)
I want any references to data_store.a to return self.value rather than the Interval instance. Is this possible?
As an alternative to Malik's answer, you could make a a #property, the Pythonic equivalent of get and set for managing access to internal attributes:
class DataStore(object):
def __init__(self):
self.a = Interval(1)
#property
def a(self):
return self._a.value
#a.setter
def a(self, value):
self._a = value
Here _a is a private-by-convention attribute that stores the Interval instance. This works as you want it:
>>> store = DataStore()
>>> store.a
1
You need to extend your data store whose attribute is an interval object:
class DataStore(object):
def __init__(self):
self.a = Interval(1)
def __getattribute__(self, attr):
if attr == 'a':
return object.__getattribute__(self, 'a').value
if attr != 'a':
return object.__getattribute__(self, attr)
In a class, I want to define N persistent properties. I can implement them as follow:
#property
def prop1(self):
return self.__prop1
#prop1.setter
def prop1(self, value):
self.__prop1 = value
persistenceManagement()
#property
def prop2(self):
return self.__prop2
#prop2.setter
def prop2(self, value):
self.__prop2 = value
persistenceManagement()
[...]
#property
def propN(self):
return self.__propN
#propN.setter
def propN(self, value):
self.__propN = value
persistenceManagement()
Of course, the only different thing between these blocks is the property name (prop1, prop2, ..., propN). persistenceManagement() is a function that has to be called when the value of one of these property changes.
Since these blocks of code are identical except for a single information (i.e., the property name), I suppose there must be some way to replace each of these blocks by single lines declaring the existence of a persistent property with a given name. Something like
def someMagicalPatternFunction(...):
[...]
someMagicalPatternFunction("prop1")
someMagicalPatternFunction("prop2")
[...]
someMagicalPatternFunction("propN")
...or maybe some decorating trick that I cannot see at the moment. Is someone has an idea how this could be done?
Properties are just descriptor classes and you can create your own and use them:
class MyDescriptor(object):
def __init__(self, name, func):
self.func = func
self.attr_name = '__' + name
def __get__(self, instance, owner):
return getattr(self, self.attr_name)
def __set__(self, instance, value):
setattr(self, self.attr_name, value)
self.func(self.attr_name)
def postprocess(attr_name):
print 'postprocess called after setting', attr_name
class Example(object):
prop1 = MyDescriptor('prop1', postprocess)
prop2 = MyDescriptor('prop2', postprocess)
obj = Example()
obj.prop1 = 'answer' # prints 'postprocess called after setting __prop1'
obj.prop2 = 42 # prints 'postprocess called after setting __prop2'
Optionally you can make it a little easier to use with something like this:
def my_property(name, postprocess=postprocess):
return MyDescriptor(name, postprocess)
class Example(object):
prop1 = my_property('prop1')
prop2 = my_property('prop2')
If you like the decorator # syntax, you could do it this way (which also alleviates having to type the name of the property twice) -- however the dummy functions it requires seem a little weird...
def my_property(method):
name = method.__name__
return MyDescriptor(name, postprocess)
class Example(object):
#my_property
def prop1(self): pass
#my_property
def prop2(self): pass
The property class (yes it's a class) is just one possible implementation of the descriptor protocol (which is fully documented here: http://docs.python.org/2/howto/descriptor.html). Just write your own custom descriptor and you'll be done.
I want to define a class containing read and write methods, which can be called as follows:
instance.read
instance.write
instance.device.read
instance.device.write
To not use interlaced classes, my idea was to overwrite the __getattr__ and __setattr__ methods and to check, if the given name is device to redirect the return to self. But I encountered a problem giving infinite recursions. The example code is as follows:
class MyTest(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self.x = x
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
if name=="device":
print "device test"
else:
setattr(self, name, value)
test = MyTest(1)
As in __init__ the code tried to create a new attribute x, it calls __setattr__, which again calls __setattr__ and so on. How do I need to change this code, that, in this case, a new attribute x of self is created, holding the value 1?
Or is there any better way to handle calls like instance.device.read to be 'mapped' to instance.read?
As there are always questions about the why: I need to create abstractions of xmlrpc calls, for which very easy methods like myxmlrpc.instance,device.read and similar can be created. I need to 'mock' this up to mimic such multi-dot-method calls.
You must call the parent class __setattr__ method:
class MyTest(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self.x = x
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
if name=="device":
print "device test"
else:
super(MyTest, self).__setattr__(name, value)
# in python3+ you can omit the arguments to super:
#super().__setattr__(name, value)
Regarding the best-practice, since you plan to use this via xml-rpc I think this is probably better done inside the _dispatch method.
A quick and dirty way is to simply do:
class My(object):
def __init__(self):
self.device = self
Or you can modify self.__dict__ from inside __setattr__():
class SomeClass(object):
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
print(name, value)
self.__dict__[name] = value
def __init__(self, attr1, attr2):
self.attr1 = attr1
self.attr2 = attr2
sc = SomeClass(attr1=1, attr2=2)
sc.attr1 = 3
You can also use object.
class TestClass:
def __init__(self):
self.data = 'data'
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
print("Attempt to edit the attribute %s" %(name))
object.__setattr__(self, name, value)
or you can just use #property:
class MyTest(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self.x = x
#property
def device(self):
return self
If you don't want to specify which attributes can or cannot be set, you can split the class to delay the get/set hooks until after initialization:
class MyTest(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self.x = x
self.__class__ = _MyTestWithHooks
class _MyTestWithHooks(MyTest):
def __setattr__(self, name, value):
...
def __getattr__(self, name):
...
if __name__ == '__main__':
a = MyTest(12)
...
As noted in the code you'll want to instantiate MyTest, since instantiating _MyTestWithHooks will result in the same infinite recursion problem as before.