is decorator the right thing to use?

Dmitry S. Makovey dmitry at makovey.net
Wed Sep 24 23:35:06 EDT 2008


showellshowell at gmail.com wrote:
> Your code below is very abstract, so it's kind of hard to figure out
> what problem you're trying to solve, but it seems to me that you're
> using the B proxy class to decorate the A target class, which means
> you want one of these options:

Sorry for unclarities in original post. Basically A aggregates object of
class B (example with no decorators and again it's oversimplified):

class A:
        b=None
        def __init__(self,b):
                self.b=b

        def amethod(self,a):
                print "A::amethod ", a

        def bmethod(self,a):
                print "A::bmethod ",a
                return self.b.bmethod(a)

        def bmethod2(self,a,z):
                print "A::bmethod2 ",a,z
                return self.b.bmethod2(a,z)


class B:
        def __init__(self):
                self.val=a

        def bmethod(self,a):
                print "B::bmethod ",a

        def bmethod2(self,a,z):
                print "B::bmethod2 ",a,z


b=B()
a=A(b)
a.bmethod('foo')
a.bmethod2('bar','baz')

In my real-life case A is a proxy to B, C and D instances/objects, not just
one. If you look at above code - whenever I write new method in either B, C
or D I have to modify A, or even when I modify signature (say, add
parameter x to bmethod) in B, C or D I have to make sure A is synchronized.
I was hoping to use decorator to do it automatically for me. Since the
resulting code is virtually all the same for all those proxy methods it
seems to be a good place for automation. Or am I wrong assuming that?
(since it is my first time using decorators I honestly don't know)

Abovementioned code ilustrates what I am doing right now. My original post
is an attempt to make things more automated/foolproof.




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