Decorator to inject function into __call__ of a class

Jack Diederich jackdied at gmail.com
Sat Mar 13 12:42:01 EST 2010


On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Jon Clements <joncle at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 13 Mar, 16:42, Jack Diederich <jackd... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Jon Clements <jon... at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > This is semi-experimental and I'd appreciate opinions of whether it's
>> > the correct design approach or not. It seems like a good idea, but it
>> > doesn't mean it is.
>>
>> > I have a class 'A', this provides standard support functions and
>> > exception handling.
>> > I have 'B' and 'C' which specialise upon 'A'
>>
>> > What I'd like to achieve is something similar to:
>>
>> > @inject(B):
>> >  def some_function(a, b):
>> >     pass # something useful
>>
>> > The name 'some_function' is completely redundant -- don't need it,
>> > don't actually care about the function afterwards, as long as it
>> > becomes a __call__ of a 'B' *instance*.
>>
>> > I've basically got a huge list of functions, which need to be the
>> > callable method of an object, and possibly at run-time, so I don't
>> > want to do:
>>
>> > class Something(B):
>> >    def __call__(self, etc.. etc...):
>> >         pass # do something
>>
>> > I've got as far as type(somename, (B,), {}) -- do I then __init__ or
>> > __new__ the object or...
>>
>> > In short, the function should be the __call__ method of an object that
>> > is already __init__'d with the function arguments -- so that when the
>> > object is called, I get the result of the the function (based on the
>> > objects values).
>>
>> I'm not sure exactly what you are asking for, but if what you want is
>> a bunch of different objects that vary only by their class's __call__
>> you could do it with a function that returns a new class based on A
>> but with a new __call__:
>>
>> def make_new_call_class(base_class, call_func):
>>   class NewClass(base_class):
>>     def __call__(self, *args, **kw):
>>       return call_func(self, *args, *kw)
>>   return NewClass
>>
>> or the return could even be NewClass() [return an instance] if this is
>> a one off.
>>
>> That said, I'm not really sure what this behavior is good for.
>>
>> -Jack
>
> Cheers Jack for the response.
>
> The behaviour is to not derive from a class, but rather allow
> the decorators to do so... so I would like to iterate over
> a list of functions (don't care what they're called) and then
> inject the function as a method. If needs be at run-time.
>
> Say I have 1000 functions (okay, admittedly over quoted), but
> I don't want every programmer to inherit from 'B' or 'C', but
> to 'inject'. So the idea is that classes are pre-defined, have
> predictable behaviour, *except* the __call__ is different.
>
> You are correct in this. Why do I want that behaviour? ->
>
> - It's easier, no inheriting from a class, when needs not.
> - Some integrity (anyone can define a function and 'inject' to the
> Management class)
> - Easier maintainability - maybe :)
>
> for i in function_list:
>    i = inject(function_list)
>
> At the end of the day:
> def blah(x, y, z):
>   pass
>
> That should be the callable of the object.

I'm still not sure why you are trying to do this, but you can do it
with delegation.  Have the parent class's __call__ look for an
instance attribute named call_this and then call it, ex/

class A():
  def __call__(self, *args, **kw):
    self.call_this(*args, **kw)  # we grab this off the instance

ob = A()
def my_func(*stuff): pass
ob.call_this = my_func

-Jack



More information about the Python-list mailing list