Accessing dict keys like an attribute?

Question

I find it more convenient to access dict keys as obj.foo instead of obj[\'foo\'], so I wrote this snippet:

class AttributeDict(dict         


        

Answer 1

I created this based on the input from this thread. I need to use odict though, so I had to override get and set attr. I think this should work for the majority of special uses.

Usage looks like this:

# Create an ordered dict normally...
>>> od = OrderedAttrDict()
>>> od["a"] = 1
>>> od["b"] = 2
>>> od
OrderedAttrDict([('a', 1), ('b', 2)])

# Get and set data using attribute access...
>>> od.a
1
>>> od.b = 20
>>> od
OrderedAttrDict([('a', 1), ('b', 20)])

# Setting a NEW attribute only creates it on the instance, not the dict...
>>> od.c = 8
>>> od
OrderedAttrDict([('a', 1), ('b', 20)])
>>> od.c
8

The class:

class OrderedAttrDict(odict.OrderedDict):
    """
    Constructs an odict.OrderedDict with attribute access to data.

    Setting a NEW attribute only creates it on the instance, not the dict.
    Setting an attribute that is a key in the data will set the dict data but 
    will not create a new instance attribute
    """
    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        """
        Try to get the data. If attr is not a key, fall-back and get the attr
        """
        if self.has_key(attr):
            return super(OrderedAttrDict, self).__getitem__(attr)
        else:
            return super(OrderedAttrDict, self).__getattr__(attr)


    def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
        """
        Try to set the data. If attr is not a key, fall-back and set the attr
        """
        if self.has_key(attr):
            super(OrderedAttrDict, self).__setitem__(attr, value)
        else:
            super(OrderedAttrDict, self).__setattr__(attr, value)

This is a pretty cool pattern already mentioned in the thread, but if you just want to take a dict and convert it to an object that works with auto-complete in an IDE, etc:

class ObjectFromDict(object):
    def __init__(self, d):
        self.__dict__ = d