Accessing an attribute using a variable in Python

Question

How do I reference this_prize.left or this_prize.right using a variable?

from collections import namedtuple
import random 

Prize = namedtuple("Prize", ["left", "right"]) 
this_prize = Prize("FirstPrize", "SecondPrize")

if random.random() > .5:
    choice = "left"
else:
    choice = "right"

# retrieve the value of "left" or "right" depending on the choice
print("You won", this_prize.choice)

AttributeError: 'Prize' object has no attribute 'choice'

Asked By: Peter Stewart

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Source

Answer 1

getattr(this_prize, choice)

From http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#getattr:

getattr(object, name) returns the value of the named attribute of object. name must be a string

Answered By: S.Lott

Answer 2

The expression this_prize.choice is telling the interpreter that you want to access an attribute of this_prize with the name "choice". But this attribute does not exist in this_prize.

What you actually want is to return the attribute of this_prize identified by the value of choice. So you just need to change your last line using the getattr() method…

from collections import namedtuple

import random

Prize = namedtuple("Prize", ["left", "right" ])

this_prize = Prize("FirstPrize", "SecondPrize")

if random.random() > .5:
    choice = "left"
else:
    choice = "right"

# retrieve the value of "left" or "right" depending on the choice

print "You won", getattr(this_prize, choice)

Answered By: AJ.

Accessing an attribute using a variable in Python

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