Is there a way to insert hooks into a native dictionary type to see when a query arrives and what's looked up?
Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Wed Dec 14 04:38:44 EST 2016
On Wednesday 14 December 2016 17:11, Veek M wrote:
> I know that with user classes one can define getattr, setattr to handle
> dictionary lookup. Is there a way to hook into the native dict() type
> and see in real time what's being queried.
Not easily, and maybe not at all.
There are two obvious ways to do this:
(1) monkey-patch the object's __dict__, and the class __dict__.
Unfortunately, Python doesn't support monkey-patching built-ins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch
Or perhaps I should say, *fortunately* Python doesn't support it.
http://www.virtuouscode.com/2008/02/23/why-monkeypatching-is-destroying-ruby/
(2) Alternatively, you could make a dict subclass, and replace the class and
instance __dict__ with your own.
Unfortunately, you cannot replace the __dict__ of a class:
py> class X: # the class you want to hook into
... pass
...
py> class MyDict(dict): # my custom dict
... def __getitem__(self, key):
... print(key)
... return super().__getitem__(key)
...
py> d = MyDict()
py> d.update(X.__dict__)
py> X.__dict__ = d
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: attribute '__dict__' of 'type' objects is not writable
You can replace the instance dict, but Python won't call your __getitem__
method:
py> instance = X()
py> instance.__dict__ = MyDict()
py> instance.a = 999
py> instance.a
999
So the short answer is, No.
You might be able to create a completely new metaclass that supports this, but
it would be a lot of work, and I'm not even sure that it would be successful.
> I wanted to check if when one does:
>
> x.sin()
>
> if the x.__dict__ was queried or if the Foo.__dict__ was queried..
The easiest way to do that is something like this:
py> class Test:
... def sin(self):
... return 999
...
py> x = Test()
py> x.sin
<bound method Test.sin of <__main__.Test object at 0xb6fc3a4c>>
py> x.sin()
999
py> x.sin = "surprise!"
py> x.sin
'surprise!'
So now you know: an instance attribute will shadow the class attribute.
(Actually, that's not *completely* true. It depends on whether x.sin is a
descriptor or not, and if so, what kind of descriptor.)
--
Steven
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing
it everywhere." - Jon Ronson
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