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What is an alternative to using `__getattr__()` method for wrapper classes?

Suppose that I have two classes:
a class named Swimmer
a class named Person
For my particular application, we can NOT have Swimmer inherit from Person, although we want something like inheritance.
Instead of class inheritance each Swimmer will have an instance of the Person class as a member variable.
class Person:
pass
class Swimmer:
def __init__(self, person):
self._person = person
def __getattr__(self, attrname:str):
try:
attr = getattr(self._person)
return attr
except AttributeError:
raise AttributeError
Perhaps the Person class has the following class methods:
kneel()
crawl()
walk()
lean_over()
lay_down()
The Swimmer class has all of the same methods as the Person class, plus some additional methods:
run()
swim()
dive()
throw_ball()
When it comes to kneeling, crawling, walking, and laying down, a Swimmer is meant to be a transparent wrapper around the Person class.
I want to write something like this:
swimmer_instance = SwimmerClass(person_instance)
I wrote a __getattr__() method.
However, I ran into many headaches with __getattr__().
Consider writing the code self.oops. There is no attribute of the _Swimmer class named oops. We should not look for oops inside of self._person.
Aanytime that I mistyped the name of an attribute of Swimmer, my computer searched for that attribute in the instance of the Person class. Normally, fixing such spelling mistakes is easy. But, with a __getattr__() method, tracking down the problem becomes difficult.
How can I avoid this problem?
Perhaps one option is create a sub-class of the Swimmer class. In the sub-class have have a method, the name of which is a misspelling of __getattr__. However, I am not sure about this idea; please advise me.
class _Swimmer:
def __init__(self, person):
self._person = person
def run(self):
return "I ran"
def swim(self):
return "I swam"
def dive(self):
# SHOULD NOT LOOK FOR `oops` inside of self._person!
self.oops
return "I dove"
def _getattrimp(self, attrname:str):
# MISSPELLING OF `__getattr__`
try:
attr = getattr(self._person)
return attr
except AttributeError:
raise AttributeError
class Swimmer(_Swimmer):
def __getattr__(self, attrname:str):
attr = self._getattrimp(attrname)
return attr
Really, it is important to me that we not look inside of self._person for anything except the following:
Kneel()
Crawl()
Walk()
Lean()
LayDown()
The solution must be more general than just something what works for the Swimmer class and Person class.
How do we write a function which accepts any class as input and pops out a class which has methods of the same name as the input class?
We can get a list of Person attributes by writing person_attributes = dir(Person).
Is it appropriate to dynamically create a sub-class of Swimmer which takes Person as input?
class Person:
def kneel(self, *args, **kwargs):
return "I KNEELED"
def crawl(self, *args, **kwargs):
return "I crawled"
def walk(self, *args, **kwargs):
return "I WALKED"
def lean_over(self, *args, **kwargs):
return "I leaned over"
################################################################
import functools
class TransparentMethod:
def __init__(self, mthd):
self._mthd = mthd
#classmethod
def make_transparent_method(cls, old_method):
new_method = cls(old_method)
new_method = functools.wraps(old_method)
return new_method
def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
ret_val = self._mthd(*args, **kwargs)
return ret_val
###############################################################
attributes = dict.fromkeys(dir(Person))
for attr_name in attributes.keys():
old_attr = getattr(Person, attr_name)
new_attr = TransparentMethod.make_transparent_method(old_attr)
name = "_Swimmer"
bases = (object, )
_Swimmer = type(name, bases, attributes)
  
class Swimmer(_Swimmer):
pass

If I understand your question correctly, you want a function that will combine two classes into one.
The way I did this was to create a blank container class with the 3 parameter type() constructor, then loop over every class passed to the function, using setattr to set new attributes of the container class. I had to blacklist the __class__ and __dict__ attributes because Python doesn't allow one to change these. Note that this function will overwrite previously added methods, such as the __init__() method, so pass the class with the constructor last.
I implemented this in the combineClasses function below. I also provided an example. In the example, I created the a basic Person class and a _Swimmer class. I called combineClasses on these two and stored the resulting class as Swimmer, so it can nicely be called as a wrapper class.
def combineClasses(name, *args):
container = type(name, (object,), {})
reserved = ['__class__', '__dict__']
for arg in args:
for method in dir(arg):
if method not in reserved:
setattr(container, method, getattr(arg, method))
return container
class Person:
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
def sayHi(self):
print(f'Hi, I am {self.name}')
class _Swimmer:
def swim(self):
print('I am swimming')
class _Cashier:
def work(self):
print(f'I am working! My name is {self.name}')
Swimmer = combineClasses('Swimmer', _Swimmer, Person)
bob = Swimmer('Bob')
bob.swim() # => "I am swimming"
bob.sayHi() # => "Hi, I am Bob"
print(bob.name) # => "Bob"
print(type(bob)) # => "<class '__main__.Swimmer'>"

Tracking decorated methods of children classes in python

In python, how can I setup a parent class to track methods with a specific decorator for each child seperatly? A quick code snippet of what I am trying to do:
class Parent:
decorated_func_dict = {} #dictionary that stores name->func for decorated functions
def get_func_by_decorator_name(self, name):
#stuff
pass
class Child1(Parent):
#func_name("Bob")
def bob_func(self, *args):
pass
#func_name("Tom")
def func2(self, *args):
pass
class Child2(Parent):
#func_name("Bob")
def func_bob2(self, *args):
pass
foo = Child1()
bar = Child2()
foo.get_func_by_decorator_name("Bob")
#Returns foo.bob_func
bar.get_func_by_decorator_name("Bob")
#Returns bar.func_bob2
Using Python 3.9.

A decorator is not something that makes a function look pretty. It is a callable that ingests an object (not only functions), does some arbitrary operations, and returns a replacement object.
In this case, your decorator should be storing references to function objects in a dictionary somewhere. The problem is that you won't be able to reference the class in which the functions are defined until it is created, which happens well after the decorator is run. You can avoid this by storing the name of the class as well as the name of the function.
The final step here is to properly bind the function objects to methods on the right object. That is something that get_func_by_decorated_name can do for you.
In sum, you can write something like this:
decorated_func_dict = {}
def func_name(cls_name, func_name):
def decorator(func):
decorated_func_dict.setdefault(cls_name, {})[func_name] = func
return func
return decorator
class Parent:
def get_func_by_decorator_name(self, name):
return decorated_func_dict[type(self).__name__][name].__get__(self)
class Child1(Parent):
#func_name("Child1", "Bob")
def bob_func(self, *args):
pass
#func_name("Child1", "Tom")
def func2(self, *args):
pass
class Child2(Parent):
#func_name("Child2", "Bob")
def func_bob2(self, *args):
pass
And indeed you get:
>>> foo.get_func_by_decorator_name("Bob")
<bound method Child1.bob_func of <__main__.Child1 object at 0x000001D58181E070>>
>>> bar.get_func_by_decorator_name("Bob")
<bound method Child2.func_bob2 of <__main__.Child2 object at 0x000001D582041F10>>
Another way to do this is to give your functions a name attribute, which you can then aggregate into a mapping in __init_subclass__ in Parent. This allows you to make an interface a bit closer to what you originally intended:
def func_name(func_name):
def decorator(func):
func.special_name = func_name
return func
return decorator
class Parent:
def __init_subclass__(cls):
cls.decorated_func_dict = {}
for item in cls.__dict__.values():
if hasattr(item, 'special_name'):
cls.decorated_func_dict[item.special_name] = item
del item.special_name # optional
def get_func_by_decorator_name(self, name):
return self.decorated_func_dict[name].__get__(self)
class Child1(Parent):
#func_name("Bob")
def bob_func(self, *args):
pass
#func_name("Tom")
def func2(self, *args):
pass
class Child2(Parent):
#func_name("Bob")
def func_bob2(self, *args):
pass
The results are identical to the first example.
The easiest way would of course be to get access to the child's namespace before the class is created, e.g. with a metaclass.

Delegating #classmethods in python

I need a delegated class to delegate a #classmethod. Here's what I've tried:
class Foo(object):
def __init__(self, a):
self.a = a
#classmethod
def from_a(cls, a):
return cls(a)
class Bar(object):
def __init__(self, foo):
elf._foo = foo
def __getattribute__(self, name):
return getattr(self._foo, name)
But, of course this doesn't define how to look up attributes of Foo (not of an instance of Foo), so Bar.from_a(5) will raise an AttributeError. While it is of course possible to do this explicitly by defining a from_a method on Bar or to do this at instantiation by calling Bar(Foo.from_a(5)), I would rather do this implicitly. Ideas?

I started working on what I thought would be a simple approach for this using a metaclass, but it is actually fairly complex. What you should probably be doing here is having Bar inherit from Foo, but I'll show you what I came up with all the same:
import types
import functools
def make_delegating_type(delegatee):
class DelegatingType(type):
def __getattr__(self, name):
obj = getattr(delegatee, name)
if isinstance(obj, (types.FunctionType, types.MethodType)):
#functools.wraps(obj)
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
result = obj(*args, **kwargs)
if isinstance(result, delegatee):
return self(result)
return result
return wrapper
return obj
return DelegatingType
class Foo(object):
def __init__(self, a): self.a = a
#classmethod
def from_a(cls, a): return cls(a)
class Bar(object):
__metaclass__ = make_delegating_type(Foo)
def __init__(self, foo): self._foo = foo
def __getattr__(self, name): return getattr(self._foo, name)
Note that in 3.x you would use class Bar(object, metaclass=make_delegating_type(Foo) instead of the __metaclass__ = make_delegating_type(Foo) line at the top of the Bar class body.
Here is how this works. Your current version currently delegates attribute lookups on instances of Bar to an instance of Foo, this uses a metaclass so that attributes lookups on the class Bar are delegated to the class Foo as well. Unfortunately it is not as simple as just using a __getattr__ definition that returns getattr(delegatee, name), because if the attribute your a looking up is a factory function as in your example you need a version of that factory function that will return an instance of your delegating type. So for example Bar.from_a(5) should be the same as Bar(Foo.from_a(5)), and with the naive approach you would just get Foo.from_a(5). That is why there is all the logic detecting if the attribute is a function or method, and creating a wrapper that checks the return type of that function/method.
To reiterate, I do not recommend that you use this code! It is much more complicated then just defining from_a on Bar or having Bar inherit from Foo. But hopefully it will be a learning experience for you, as it was for me.

Can I refactor this simple callback pattern that uses the property decorator?

I'm just getting to grips with decorators in Python and using them to add callbacks to some instance variables using the following simple pattern:
class A(object):
def __init__(self):
self._var = 0
self.var_callbacks = []
#property
def var(self):
return self._var
#var.setter
def var(self, x):
self._var = x
for f in self.var_callbacks:
f(x)
The property decorator is a neat way of allowing me to introduce callbacks where necessary without changing the class interface. However, after the third or fourth variable it's making the code a bit repetitive.
Is there a way to refactor this pattern into something along the following:
class A(object):
def __init__(self):
self.var = 0
enable_callback(self, 'var', 'var_callbacks')

You'll need to set the property on the class (since it is a descriptor), so using a enable_callback call in the initializer is not going to work.
You could use a class decorator to set the properties from a pattern:
def callback_properties(callbacks_attribute, *names):
def create_callback_property(name):
def getter(self):
return getattr(self, '_' + name)
def setter(self, value):
setattr(self, '_' + name, value)
for f in getattr(self, callbacks_attribute):
f(value)
return property(getter, setter)
def add_callback_properties(cls):
for name in names:
setattr(cls, name, create_callback_property(name)
return cls
return add_callback_properties
Then use that as:
#add_callback_properties('var_callbacks', 'var1', 'var2')
class A(object):
# everything else

Have a look at the Python descriptor protocol. In essence, you can define a class that handles the getting, setting and deleting of a property. So you could define a descriptor that runs your callbacks on setting the attribute.
Descriptors are regular classes, and can be parameterized. So you could implement a descriptor that takes the destination variable its constructor. Something like the following:
class A(object):
var = CallbackDescriptor('var')
foo = CallbackDescriptor('foo')

Python: How to register all child classes with the father class upon creation

I have python class trees, each made up of an abstract base class and many deriving concrete classes. I want all concrete classes to be accessible through a base-class method, and I do not want to specify anything during child-class creation.
This is what my imagined solution looks like:
class BaseClassA(object):
# <some magic code around here>
#classmethod
def getConcreteClasses(cls):
# <some magic related code here>
class ConcreteClassA1(BaseClassA):
# no magic-related code here
class ConcreteClassA2(BaseClassA):
# no magic-related code here
As much as possible, I'd prefer to write the "magic" once as a sort of design pattern. I want to be able to apply it to different class trees in different scenarios (i.e. add a similar tree with "BaseClassB" and its concrete classes).
Thanks Internet!

you can use meta classes for that:
class AutoRegister(type):
def __new__(mcs, name, bases, classdict):
new_cls = type.__new__(mcs, name, bases, classdict)
#print mcs, name, bases, classdict
for b in bases:
if hasattr(b, 'register_subclass'):
b.register_subclass(new_cls)
return new_cls
class AbstractClassA(object):
__metaclass__ = AutoRegister
_subclasses = []
#classmethod
def register_subclass(klass, cls):
klass._subclasses.append(cls)
#classmethod
def get_concrete_classes(klass):
return klass._subclasses
class ConcreteClassA1(AbstractClassA):
pass
class ConcreteClassA2(AbstractClassA):
pass
class ConcreteClassA3(ConcreteClassA2):
pass
print AbstractClassA.get_concrete_classes()
I'm personnaly very wary of this kind of magic. Don't put too much of this in your code.

Here is a simple solution using modern python's (3.6+) __init__subclass__ defined in PEP 487. It allows you to avoid using a meta-class.
class BaseClassA(object):
_subclasses = []
#classmethod
def get_concrete_classes(cls):
return list(cls._subclasses)
def __init_subclass__(cls):
BaseClassA._subclasses.append(cls)
class ConcreteClassA1(BaseClassA):
pass # no magic-related code here
class ConcreteClassA2(BaseClassA):
pass # no magic-related code here
print(BaseClassA.get_concrete_classes())

You should know that part of the answer you're looking for is built-in. New-style classes automatically keep a weak reference to all of their child classes which can be accessed with the __subclasses__ method:
#classmethod
def getConcreteClasses(cls):
return cls.__subclasses__()
This won't return sub-sub-classes. If you need those, you can create a recursive generator to get them all:
#classmethod
def getConcreteClasses(cls):
for c in cls.__subclasses__():
yield c
for c2 in c.getConcreteClasses():
yield c2

Another way to do this, with a decorator, if your subclasses are either not defining __init__ or are calling their parent's __init__:
def lister(cls):
cls.classes = list()
cls._init = cls.__init__
def init(self, *args, **kwargs):
cls = self.__class__
if cls not in cls.classes:
cls.classes.append(cls)
cls._init(self, *args, **kwargs)
cls.__init__ = init
#classmethod
def getclasses(cls):
return cls.classes
cls.getclasses = getclasses
return cls
#lister
class A(object): pass
class B(A): pass
class C(A):
def __init__(self):
super(C, self).__init__()
b = B()
c = C()
c2 = C()
print 'Classes:', c.getclasses()
It will work whether or not the base class defines __init__.