[Edu-sig] Pythonic "case statement"

[Dethe Elza]

On 6/14/06, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Bernie --
>
> Pythoneers (or Pythonistas as some say -- snake charmers) do have a
> case statement of sorts, thanks to functions (subprocedures) being top
> level.
>
[snipped]

I generally use a dict for this, mainly because my keys are more often
strings than
integers.  For example, a skeleton for a CGI-based REST application:

def get(arg):
    print 'responding to a GET'

def post(arg):
    print 'responding to a POST'

def put(arg):
    print 'responding to a PUT'

def delete(arg):
    print 'responding to a DELETE'

def main():
    import os
    import cgi
    method = os.environ.get('REQUEST_METHOD', 'GET')
    arg = cgi.FieldStorage().getfirst('value')
    # dispatch to the appropriate function
    dict(GET=get, POST=post, PUT=put, DELETE=delete)[method](arg)

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

--Dethe