Cool object trick

[Bengt Richter]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 08:39:47 +0100, "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Carl Banks wrote:
>
>> For example:
>>
>> .    def lookup_reference(key):
>> .        ....
>> .        return Bunch(title=title,author=author,...)
>>
>> The code quickly and easily returns a object with the desired keys.
>> The code that calls this function would access the return values
>> directly, like this:
>>
>> .    m = lookupreference()
>> .    print "%s was written by %s" % (m.title,m.author)
>>
>> You could still use a dict for this, but a Bunch class neater and more
>> concise (not to mention less typing).
>
>this is how your example looks in Python:
>
>    def lookup_reference(key):
>        ...
>        return dict(title=title, author=author, ...)
>
>    m = lookup_reference(...)
>    print "%(title)s was written by %(author)s" % m
>
>(if you fix the bug in your example, and count the characters, you'll find
>that my example is a bit shorter)
>
>with enough keys, you can also save typing by using dummy object instead
>of a dictionary, and getting rid of the locals in lookup_reference:
>
>    def lookup_reference(key):
>        m = object()
>        m.title = ... assign directly to return struct members ...
>        m.author = ...
>        return m
>
>    m = lookup_reference(...)
>    print "%(title)s was written by %(author)s" % vars(m)
>
 >>> m = object()
 >>> m.title = 'not so fast ;-)'
 Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
 AttributeError: 'object' object has no attribute 'title'
 >>> m=type('',(),{})()
 >>> m.title = 'not so fast ;-)'
 >>> m.title
 'not so fast ;-)'

Regards,
Bengt Richter