Class.__class__ magic trick help

[Oscar Benjamin]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 21:17:15 -0700 (PDT), Massimo Di Pierro 
<massimo.dipierro at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider this code:


> class SlowStorage(dict):
>     def __getattr__(self,key):
>           return self[key]
>     def __setattr__(self,key):
>           self[key]=value


> class FastStorage(dict):
>     def __init__(self, __d__=None, **kwargs):
>         self.update(__d__,**kwargs)
>     def __getitem__(self,key):
>         return self.__dict__.get(key,None)
>     def __setitem__(self,key,value):
>         self.__dict__[key] = value
>     def __delitem__(self,key):
>         delattr(self,key)
>     def __copy__(self):
>         return Storage(self)
>     def __nonzero__(self):
>         return len(self.__dict__)>0
>     def pop(self,key,default=None):
>         if key in self:
>             default = getattr(self,key)
>             delattr(self,key)
>         return default
>     def clear(self):
>         self.__dict__.clear()
>     def __repr__(self):
>         return repr(self.__dict__)
>     def keys(self):
>         return self.__dict__.keys()
>     def values(self):
>         return self.__dict__.values()
>     def items(self):
>         return self.__dict__.items()
>       def iterkeys(self):
>         return self.__dict__.iterkeys()
>     def itervalues(self):
>         return self.__dict__.itervalues()
>     def iteritems(self):
>         return self.__dict__.iteritems()
>     def viewkeys(self):
>         return self.__dict__.viewkeys()
>     def viewvalues(self):
>         return self.__dict__.viewvalues()
>     def viewitems(self):
>         return self.__dict__.viewitems()
>     def fromkeys(self,S,v=None):
>         return self.__dict__.fromkeys(S,v)
>     def setdefault(self, key, default=None):
>         try:
>             return getattr(self,key)
>         except AttributeError:
>             setattr(self,key,default)
>             return default
>     def clear(self):
>         self.__dict__.clear()
>     def len(self):
>         return len(self.__dict__)
>     def __iter__(self):
>         return self.__dict__.__iter__()
>     def has_key(self,key):
>         return key in self.__dict__
>     def __contains__(self,key):
>         return key in self.__dict__
>     def update(self,__d__=None,**kwargs):
>         if __d__:
>             for key in __d__:
>                 kwargs[key] = __d__[key]
>         self.__dict__.update(**kwargs)
>     def get(self,key,default=None):
>         return getattr(self,key) if key in self else default


> >>> s=SlowStorage()
> >>> a.x=1  ### (1)
> >>> a.x    ### (2)
> 1 # ok
> >>> isinstance(a,dict)
> True # ok
> >>> print dict(a)
> {'x':1} # ok (3)

Try:
>>> a.items()

What does that show?




> >>> s=FastStorage()
> >>> a.x=1  ### (4)
> >>> a.x    ### (5)
> 1 # ok
> >>> isinstance(a,dict)
> True # ok
> >>> print dict(a)
> {} # not ok (6)


> Lines (4) and (5) are about 10x faster then lines (1) and (2). I 
like
> FastStorage better but while (3) behaves ok, (6) does not behave as 
I
> want.


> I intuitively understand why FastStorage is cannot cast into dict
> properly.


> What I do not know is how to make it do the casting properly without
> losing the 10x speedup of FastStorage over SlowStorage.


> Any idea?

I don't really understand what your trying to do but since you didn't 
add the __setattr__ method to FastStorage the item is not added to 
the dictionary when you do a.x = 1

Oscar