Using a Python dictionary as a holder of object attributes

Have a great bank holiday, folks. For any sad (or happy) Python programmers out there, here's a simple example of __getattr__ in use. I've got an object of type thingy with all its atributes held in a dictionary, but I wanted to access them as if each was a separate attribute. "I couldn't find a simple example elsewhere, so I wrote one"



"""Using a dictionary as an attribute handler in Python"""



class thingy:

  def __init__(self,indict):

    self.stuff = indict

  def __getattr__(self,which):

    return self.stuff.get(which,None)



about = {"colour":"blue", "type":"flipchart marker"}



markerpen = thingy(about)



print markerpen.colour

print markerpen.age

Further examples at our module pages or learn more with us on our Python course

(written 2005-04-30, updated 2006-06-05)

Associated topics are indexed under

Y112 - Python - Objects - Intermediate
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