[Tutor] passing form data into a class

[Kent Johnson]

tpc247 at gmail.com wrote:
> dear fellow Python enthusiasts, let's say I have a dictionary of keys 
> and values obtained from a form submitted by a user.  For each submitted 
> form I will create the Application and Candidate classes, and I want to 
> be able to call Application(Candidate(**submitted_data)).display() to 
> create an html representation of the user submitted data.  Depending on 
> the applicant's preferences and location, the number of fields on the 
> form, and thus the size of this dictionary, is variable, and not all 
> fields are required.  I seem to recall a setargs function in Python that 
> would take any argument passed into a class and set that argument as a 
> member variable in a class.  A Google search turned up no such 
> construct, so here I am asking you, is there a way for me to create a 
> class that accepts a dictionary of submitted data and uses each key ad 
> value to create a corresponding member variable ?

I occasionally find this handy:

class Bunch(object):
     ''' A container for data that supports attribute access.
         http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52308
     '''
     def __init__(self, **kwds):
         self.__dict__.update(kwds)

     def __repr__(self):
         state = ["\n  %s=%r" % (attribute, value)
                  for (attribute, value)
                  in sorted(self.__dict__.items())]
         return self.__class__.__name__ + ':' + ''.join(state)


Kent