matching keyword arguments to specific methods

[Donnal Walter]

Is there a better Python idiom than the following code for calling a method
by name if and only if the method exists?

            if key in dir(self):
                self.__class__.__dict__[key](self, kw[key])

What I want to do is handle keyword arguments with methods that have the
same name as the keywords, something like this:

class MyBase(object):
    def __init__(self, **kw):
        for i in kw:
            if i in dir(self):
                self.__class__.__dict__[i](self, kw[i])

class MyTest1(MyBase):

    def default(self, val):
        # other processing here
        print val

    def choices(self, val):
        # other processing here
        for i in val:
            print i

class MyTest2(MyBase):

    def limits(self, val):
        # other processing here
        for i in val:
            print i


x = MyTest1(default='hello', choices = ('hi', 'hello', 'greetings'))
y = MyTest2(default='100', limits=(0, 1000))

Thanks,
Donnal Walter
Arkansas Children's Hospital