How do you programmatically set an attribute?

Question

Suppose I have a python object x and a string s, how do I set the attribute s on x? So:

>>> x =          


        

Answer 1

Usually, we define classes for this.

class XClass( object ):
   def __init__( self ):
       self.myAttr= None

x= XClass()
x.myAttr= 'magic'
x.myAttr

However, you can, to an extent, do this with the setattr and getattr built-in functions. However, they don't work on instances of object directly.

>>> a= object()
>>> setattr( a, 'hi', 'mom' )
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
AttributeError: 'object' object has no attribute 'hi'

They do, however, work on all kinds of simple classes.

class YClass( object ):
    pass

y= YClass()
setattr( y, 'myAttr', 'magic' )
y.myAttr