[python] Understanding __getitem__ method

I have gone through most of the documentation of __getitem__ in the Python docs, but I am still unable to grasp the meaning of it.

So all I can understand is that __getitem__ is used to implement calls like self[key]. But what is the use of it?

Lets say I have a python class defined in this way:

class Person:
    def __init__(self,name,age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age

    def __getitem__(self,key):
        print ("Inside `__getitem__` method!")
        return getattr(self,key)

p = Person("Subhayan",32)
print (p["age"])

This returns the results as expected. But why use __getitem__ in the first place? I have also heard that Python calls __getitem__ internally. But why does it do it?

Can someone please explain this in more detail?

The magic method __getitem__ is basically used for accessing list items, dictionary entries, array elements etc. It is very useful for a quick lookup of instance attributes.

Here I am showing this with an example class Person that can be instantiated by 'name', 'age', and 'dob' (date of birth). The __getitem__ method is written in a way that one can access the indexed instance attributes, such as first or last name, day, month or year of the dob, etc.

import copy

# Constants that can be used to index date of birth's Date-Month-Year
D = 0; M = 1; Y = -1

class Person(object):
    def __init__(self, name, age, dob):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.dob = dob

    def __getitem__(self, indx):
        print ("Calling __getitem__")
        p = copy.copy(self)

        p.name = p.name.split(" ")[indx]
        p.dob = p.dob[indx] # or, p.dob = p.dob.__getitem__(indx)
        return p

Suppose one user input is as follows:

p = Person(name = 'Jonab Gutu', age = 20, dob=(1, 1, 1999))

With the help of __getitem__ method, the user can access the indexed attributes. e.g.,

print p[0].name # print first (or last) name
print p[Y].dob  # print (Date or Month or ) Year of the 'date of birth'

The [] syntax for getting item by key or index is just syntax sugar.

When you evaluate a[i] Python calls a.__getitem__(i) (or type(a).__getitem__(a, i), but this distinction is about inheritance models and is not important here). Even if the class of a may not explicitly define this method, it is usually inherited from an ancestor class.

All the (Python 2.7) special method names and their semantics are listed here: https://docs.python.org/2.7/reference/datamodel.html#special-method-names

__getitem__ can be used to implement "lazy" dict subclasses. The aim is to avoid instantiating a dictionary at once that either already has an inordinately large number of key-value pairs in existing containers, or has an expensive hashing process between existing containers of key-value pairs, or if the dictionary represents a single group of resources that are distributed over the internet.

As a simple example, suppose you have two lists, keys and values, whereby {k:v for k,v in zip(keys, values)} is the dictionary that you need, which must be made lazy for speed or efficiency purposes:

class LazyDict(dict):
    
    def __init__(self, keys, values):
        self.keys = keys
        self.values = values
        super().__init__()
        
    def __getitem__(self, key):
        if key not in self:
            try:
                i = self.keys.index(key)
                self.__setitem__(self.keys.pop(i), self.values.pop(i))
            except ValueError, IndexError:
                raise KeyError("No such key-value pair!!")
        return super().__getitem__(key)

Usage:

>>> a = [1,2,3,4]
>>> b = [1,2,2,3]
>>> c = LazyDict(a,b)
>>> c[1]
1
>>> c[4]
3
>>> c[2]
2
>>> c[3]
2
>>> d = LazyDict(a,b)
>>> d.items()
dict_items([])