[Python-ideas] Json object-level serializer

[Michael Foord]

On 30 July 2010 11:39, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> wrote:
> > Thank you for explaining generic functions so clearly.
> >
> > Is there a good module out there implementing them without “crazily
> > complex overloading schemes”?
>
> I'm not sure. Most of my exposure to generic functions is through PJE
> and he's a big fan of pushing them to their limits (hence RuleDispatch
> and PEAK-rules).
>
> There is an extremely bare bones implementation used internally by
> pkgutil's emulation of the standard import process, but Guido has said
> we shouldn't document or promote that in any official way without a
> PEP (cf. the simple proposal in http://bugs.python.org/issue5135 and
> the PJE's previous more comprehensive proposal in PEP 3124).
>
> As others have explained more clearly than I did, generic functions
> work better than magic methods when the same basic operation (e.g.
> pretty printing, JSON serialisation) is common to many object types,
> but the details may vary between applications, or even within a single
> application. By giving the application more control over how different
> types are handled (through the generic functions' separate type
> registries) it is much easier to have context dependent behaviour,
> while still fairly easily sharing code in cases where it makes sense.
>
> E.g. to use Alex Gaynor's example of attendee list serialisation and
> the issue 5135 syntax:
>
> @functools.simplegeneric
> def json_unauthenticated(obj):
>    return json.dumps(obj) # Default to a basic dumps() call
>
> @functools.simplegeneric
> def json_authenticated(obj):
>    return json_unauthenticated(obj) # Default to being the same as
> unauthenticated info
>
> @json_unauthenticated.register(EventAttendees):
> def attendee_titles(attendees):
>    return json.dumps([attendee.title for attendee in attendees])
>
> @json_authenticated.register(EventAttendees):
> def attendee_details(attendees):
>    return json.dumps([attendee.full_details() for attendee in attendees])
>
>

I really like Alex Gaynor's simple MultiMethod implementation. From:

http://alexgaynor.net/2010/jun/26/multimethods-python/

It doesn't have a concept of a default call, but that would be very easy to
add. Basic usage is:

json_unauthenticated = MultiMethod()

@json_unauthenticated.register(EventAttendees)
def json_unauthenticated(attendees):
    return json.dumps([attendee.title for attendee in attendees])

@json_unauthenticated.register(OtherType)
def json_unauthenticated(othertypes):
    return json.dumps(othertypes)

And so on.

Michael



> (Keep in mind that I don't use JSON, so there are likely plenty of
> details wrong with the above, but it should give a basic idea of what
> generic functions are designed to support).
>
> Cheers,
> Nick.
>
> --
> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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