Can a method be a decorator of another method of the same class?

Question

I have a class with a dull repeating pattern on their functions and I wanted to turn this pattern into a decorator. But the thing is that this decorator must access some attributes of the current instance, so I wanted to turn it into a method in this class. I’m having some problems with that.

So, this is similar to what I want:

class DullRepetitiveClass:
    def __init__(self, nicevariable):
        self.nicevariable = nicevariable

    def mydecorator(self, myfunction):
        def call(*args, **kwargs):
            print "Hi! The value of nicevariable is %s"%(self.nicevariable,)
            return myfunction(*args, **kwargs)
        return call

    @mydecorator            #Here, comment (1) below.
    def somemethod(self, x):
        return x + 1

(1) Here is the problem. I want to use the DullRepetitiveClass.mydecorator method to decorate the somemethod method. But I have no idea how to use the method from the current instance as the decorator.

Is there a simple way of doing this?

EDIT: Ok, the answer is quite obvious. As Sven puts it below, the decorator itself just transform the method. The method itself should deal with all things concerning the instance:

def mydecorator(method):
    def call(self, *args, **kwargs):
        print "Hi! The value of nicevariable is %s"%(self.nicevariable,)
        return method(self, *args, **kwargs)
    return call


class DullRepetitiveClass:
    def __init__(self, nicevariable):
        self.nicevariable = nicevariable

    @mydecorator            
    def somemethod(self, x):
        return x + 1

Asked By: Rafael S. Calsaverini

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Source

Answer 1

The decorator gets only one parameter – the function or method it decorates. It does not get passed an instance as self parameter – at the moment the decorator is called, not even the class has been created, let alone an instance of the class. The instance will be passed as first argument to the decorated function, so you should include self as first parameter in the parameter list of call().

I don’t see the necessity to include the decorator in the class scope. You can do this, but you can just as well have it at module scope.

Answered By: Sven Marnach

Answer 2

In those cases where the decorator must set attributes in the object, e.g. adding a character to nicevariable,
you can set the decorator yourself instead of relying on the syntactic sugar provided by Python via the @ operator

class DullRepetitiveClass:
    def __init__(self, nicevariable):
        self.nicevariable = nicevariable
        self.somemethod = self.mydecorator(self.somemethod)

    def mydecorator(self, myfunction):
        def call(*args, **kwargs):
            self.nicevariable += 'X'
            print "Hi! The value of nicevariable is now %s"%(self.nicevariable,)
            return myfunction(*args, **kwargs)
        return call

    def somemethod(self, x):
        return x + 1

Notice how call does not get self in its parameters (print out args if you like to check), but the call to myfunction(*args, **kwargs) does inject it so somemethod gets it.

On the other hand, if you put the decorator outside the class, you could still access the object:

def mydecorator(myfunction):
    def call(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.nicevariable += 'X'
        print "Hi! The value of nicevariable is now %s"%(self.nicevariable,)
        return myfunction(self, *args, **kwargs)
    return call


class DullRepetitiveClass:
    def __init__(self, nicevariable):
        self.nicevariable = nicevariable

    @mydecorator
    def somemethod(self, x):
        return x + 1

In this case self the call function receives self

Personally, I prefer to include the decorator within the class because it operates on its specific attributes and looks more self-contained.

Answered By: Pynchia

Can a method be a decorator of another method of the same class?

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