I am trying to write a class that is "both" a list
or a dict
. I want the programmer to be able to both "cast" this object to a list
(dropping the keys) or dict
(with the keys).
Looking at the way Python currently does the dict()
cast: It calls Mapping.update()
with the object that is passed. This is the code from the Python repo:
def update(self, other=(), /, **kwds):
''' D.update([E, ]**F) -> None. Update D from mapping/iterable E and F.
If E present and has a .keys() method, does: for k in E: D[k] = E[k]
If E present and lacks .keys() method, does: for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v
In either case, this is followed by: for k, v in F.items(): D[k] = v
'''
if isinstance(other, Mapping):
for key in other:
self[key] = other[key]
elif hasattr(other, "keys"):
for key in other.keys():
self[key] = other[key]
else:
for key, value in other:
self[key] = value
for key, value in kwds.items():
self[key] = value
The last subcase of the if statement, where it is iterating over other
is the one most people have in mind. However, as you can see, it is also possible to have a keys()
property. That, combined with a __getitem__()
should make it easy to have a subclass be properly casted to a dictionary:
class Wharrgarbl(object):
def __init__(self, a, b, c, sum, version='old'):
self.a = a
self.b = b
self.c = c
self.sum = 6
self.version = version
def __int__(self):
return self.sum + 9000
def __keys__(self):
return ["a", "b", "c"]
def __getitem__(self, key):
# have obj["a"] -> obj.a
return self.__getattribute__(key)
Then this will work:
>>> w = Wharrgarbl('one', 'two', 'three', 6)
>>> dict(w)
{'a': 'one', 'c': 'three', 'b': 'two'}