Reference class in class creation

[Carl Banks]

Gregor Horvath wrote:
> Diez B. Roggisch schrieb:
>
> > Anything wrong with:
> >
> > class Foo(object):
> >    pass
> >
> > Foo.a = Foo
> >
> > ?
>
> Thanks.
> The problem with this is that there is also metaclass hacking involved
> which relies on "a" 's creation in the class body. In your suggestion
> "a" is not present when __new__ of the metaclass is called.

The metaclass's __new__ returns the class object.  This is the first
time the object is available; it's impossible to access before that,
but you can get at it before __new__ exits.  Most metaclass __new__
functions look like this:

def __new__(metatype,name,bases,clsdict):
    # do some weird stuff here
    return type.__new__(metatype,name,bases,clsdict)

You could change it to look like this instead:

def __new__(metatype,name,bases,clsdict):
    # do some weird stuff here
    cls = type.__new__(metatype,name,bases,clsdict)
    cls.a = SomeContainer(cls)
    return cls

Or, if you can't change the metaclass, you can subclass it and override
__new__ to get at cls before __new__ exits:

def __new__(metatype,name,bases,dict):
    cls = GivenMetaclass.__new__(metatype,name,bases,dict)
    cls.a = SomeContainer(cls)
    return cls

If the "metaclass hacking" you describe is setting __metaclass__ to a
function (i.e., not metaclass hacking), then same thing applies, just
modify or wrap the function to get at the class object and do what you
need to do.


Carl Banks