Preventing class methods from being defined

[Dan Sommers]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:25:50 +1100,
Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:41:02 -0800, David Hirschfield wrote:
>> Here's a strange concept that I don't really know how to implement, but 
>> I suspect can be implemented via descriptors or metaclasses somehow:
>> 
>> I want a class that, when instantiated, only defines certain methods if 
>> a global indicates it is okay to have those methods.

> Others have already made suggestions, here is a third:


> class A:
>     def foo(self):
>         print "Foo!"
>     def bar(self):
>         print "Bar!"
>     def baz(self):
>         print "Baz!"
>     __all__ = [x.__name__ for x in (foo, bar, baz)]
>     def __null(self, name="<unknown>", *args, **kwargs):
>         raise NameError("Method '%s' was disabled at init time." % name)
>     def __init__(self, data=None):
>         global permitted # not strictly needed, but I prefer it 
>         for method in self.__all__:
>             if method not in permitted:
>                 # if you are clever, use currying to bind the name of 
>                 # the method to the first arg of __null so it gives a 
>                 # more useful error message
>                 setattr(self, method, self.__null)
>         # local initialisation
>         self.x = data


> The main disadvantage of this I can see is that dir(A()) still reports
> methods foo, bar, baz even if they have been disabled. But maybe
> that's better behaviour than just making them disappear (principle of
> least surprise: better to explicitly report that something is disabled
> than to just have it magically appear and disappear).

By the principle of least surprise, if dir(some_sobject) contains foo,
then some_object.foo should *not* raise a NameError.

All of the posted solutions to the OP's problem could easily be extended
to do something noisy with the (dis-)allowed methods.

Regards,
Dan

-- 
Dan Sommers
<http://www.tombstonezero.net/dan/>