getattr and setattr on nested subobjects / chained properties?
Question:
I have an object (Person
) that has multiple subobjects (Pet, Residence
) as properties. I want to be able to dynamically set the properties of these subobjects like so:
class Person(object):
def __init__(self):
self.pet = Pet()
self.residence = Residence()
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self,name='Fido',species='Dog'):
self.name = name
self.species = species
class Residence(object):
def __init__(self,type='House',sqft=None):
self.type = type
self.sqft=sqft
if __name__=='__main__':
p=Person()
setattr(p,'pet.name','Sparky')
setattr(p,'residence.type','Apartment')
print p.__dict__
Currently I get the wrong output: {'pet': <__main__.Pet object at 0x10c5ec050>, 'residence': <__main__.Residence object at 0x10c5ec0d0>, 'pet.name': 'Sparky', 'residence.type': 'Apartment'}
As you can see, instead of setting the name
attribute on the Pet
subobject of the Person
, a new attribute pet.name
is created on the Person
.
-
I cannot specify person.pet
to setattr()
because different sub-objects will be set by the same method, which parses some text and fills in the object attributes if/when a relevant key is found.
-
Is there a easy/builtin way to accomplish this?
-
Or perhaps I need to write a recursive function to parse the string and call getattr()
multiple times until the necessary subobject is found and then call setattr()
on that found subobject?
Answers:
Ok so while typing the question I had an idea of how to do this and it seems to work fine. Here is what I came up with:
def set_attribute(obj, path_string, new_value):
parts = path_string.split('.')
final_attribute_index = len(parts)-1
current_attribute = obj
i = 0
for part in parts:
new_attr = getattr(current_attribute, part, None)
if current_attribute is None:
print 'Error %s not found in %s' % (part, current_attribute)
break
if i == final_attribute_index:
setattr(current_attribute, part, new_value)
current_attribute = new_attr
i+=1
def get_attribute(obj, path_string):
parts = path_string.split('.')
final_attribute_index = len(parts)-1
current_attribute = obj
i = 0
for part in parts:
new_attr = getattr(current_attribute, part, None)
if current_attribute is None:
print 'Error %s not found in %s' % (part, current_attribute)
return None
if i == final_attribute_index:
return getattr(current_attribute, part)
current_attribute = new_attr
i += 1
I guess this solves my question, but I am still curious if there is a better way to do this?
I feel like this has to be something pretty common in OOP and python, so I’m surprised gatattr and setattr do not support this natively.
You could use functools.reduce
:
import functools
def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)
# using wonder's beautiful simplification: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31174295/getattr-and-setattr-on-nested-objects/31174427?noredirect=1#comment86638618_31174427
def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
def _getattr(obj, attr):
return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))
rgetattr
and rsetattr
are drop-in replacements for getattr
and setattr
,
which can also handle dotted attr
strings.
import functools
class Person(object):
def __init__(self):
self.pet = Pet()
self.residence = Residence()
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self,name='Fido',species='Dog'):
self.name = name
self.species = species
class Residence(object):
def __init__(self,type='House',sqft=None):
self.type = type
self.sqft=sqft
def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)
def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
def _getattr(obj, attr):
return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))
if __name__=='__main__':
p = Person()
print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color', 'calico'))
# 'calico'
try:
# Without a default argument, `rgetattr`, like `getattr`, raises
# AttributeError when the dotted attribute is missing
print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color'))
except AttributeError as err:
print(err)
# 'Pet' object has no attribute 'favorite'
rsetattr(p, 'pet.name', 'Sparky')
rsetattr(p, 'residence.type', 'Apartment')
print(p.__dict__)
print(p.pet.name)
# Sparky
print(p.residence.type)
# Apartment
For one parent and one child:
if __name__=='__main__':
p = Person()
parent, child = 'pet.name'.split('.')
setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')
parent, child = 'residence.type'.split('.')
setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')
print p.__dict__
This is simpler than the other answers for this particular use case.
I made a simple version based on ubntu’s answer called magicattr that also works on attrs, lists, and dicts by parsing and walking the ast.
For example, with this class:
class Person:
settings = {
'autosave': True,
'style': {
'height': 30,
'width': 200
},
'themes': ['light', 'dark']
}
def __init__(self, name, age, friends):
self.name = name
self.age = age
self.friends = friends
bob = Person(name="Bob", age=31, friends=[])
jill = Person(name="Jill", age=29, friends=[bob])
jack = Person(name="Jack", age=28, friends=[bob, jill])
You can do this
# Nothing new
assert magicattr.get(bob, 'age') == 31
# Lists
assert magicattr.get(jill, 'friends[0].name') == 'Bob'
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[-1].age') == 29
# Dict lookups
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'settings["style"]["width"]') == 200
# Combination of lookups
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'settings["themes"][-2]') == 'light'
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[-1].settings["themes"][1]') == 'dark'
# Setattr
magicattr.set(bob, 'settings["style"]["width"]', 400)
assert magicattr.get(bob, 'settings["style"]["width"]') == 400
# Nested objects
magicattr.set(bob, 'friends', [jack, jill])
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[0].friends[0]') == jack
magicattr.set(jill, 'friends[0].age', 32)
assert bob.age == 32
It also won’t let you/someone call functions or assign a value since it doesn’t use eval or allow Assign/Call nodes.
with pytest.raises(ValueError) as e:
magicattr.get(bob, 'friends = [1,1]')
# Nice try, function calls are not allowed
with pytest.raises(ValueError):
magicattr.get(bob, 'friends.pop(0)')
unutbu’s answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/31174427/2683842) has a “bug”. After getattr()
fails and is replaced by default
, it continues calling getattr
on default
.
Example: rgetattr(object(), "nothing.imag", 1)
should equal 1
in my opinion, but it returns 0
:
getattr(object(), 'nothing', 1)
== 1.
getattr(1, 'imag', 1)
== 0 (since 1 is real and has no complex component).
Solution
I modified rgetattr to return default
at the first missing attribute:
import functools
DELIMITER = "."
def rgetattr(obj, path: str, *default):
"""
:param obj: Object
:param path: 'attr1.attr2.etc'
:param default: Optional default value, at any point in the path
:return: obj.attr1.attr2.etc
"""
attrs = path.split(DELIMITER)
try:
return functools.reduce(getattr, attrs, obj)
except AttributeError:
if default:
return default[0]
raise
I just love recursive functions
def rgetattr(obj,attr):
_this_func = rgetattr
sp = attr.split('.',1)
if len(sp)==1:
l,r = sp[0],''
else:
l,r = sp
obj = getattr(obj,l)
if r:
obj = _this_func(obj,r)
return obj
And a easy to understand three-liner based on jimbo1qaz’s answer, reduced to the very limit:
def rgetattr(obj, path, default):
try:
return functools.reduce(getattr, path.split(), obj)
except AttributeError:
return default
Usage:
>>> class O(object):
... pass
... o = O()
... o.first = O()
... o.first.second = O()
... o.first.second.third = 42
... rgetattr(o, 'first second third', None)
42
Just keep in mind that “space” is not a typical delimiter for this use case.
This should be a
def getNestedAttr(obj,nestedParam):
next = obj
for p in nestedParam.split('.'):
next = getattr(next,p)
return next
class Issue : pass
issue = Issue()
issue.status = Issue()
issue.status.name = "Hello"
getattr(issue,'status.name')
'''
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'Issue' object has no attribute 'status.name'
'''
getNestedAttr(issue,'status.name')
#'Hello'
simple solution
Here’s something similar to ChaimG’s answer, but it works with an arbitrary number of cases. However, it only supports get attributes, not setting them.
requested_attr = 'pet.name'
parent = Person()
sub_names = requested_attr.split('.')
sub = None
for sub_name in sub_names:
try:
sub = parent.__getattribute__(sub_name)
parent = sub
except AttributeError:
raise Exception("The panel doesn't have an attribute that matches your request!")
pets_name = sub
For an out of the box solution, you can use operator.attrgetter
:
from operator import attrgetter
attrgetter(dotted_path)(obj)
Thanks for the accepted answer above. It was helpful.
In case anyone wants to extend the use for hasattr
use the code below:
def rhasattr(obj, attr):
_nested_attrs = attr.split(".")
_curr_obj = obj
for _a in _nested_attrs[:-1]:
if hasattr(_curr_obj, _a):
_curr_obj = getattr(_curr_obj, _a)
else:
return False
return hasattr(_curr_obj, _nested_attrs[-1])
I know this post is pretty old but below code might help some one.
def getNestedObjectValue(obj={}, attr=""):
splittedFields = attr.split(".")
nestedValue = ""
previousValue = ""
for field in splittedFields:
previousValue = nestedValue
nestedValue = (
obj.get(field) if previousValue == "" else previousValue.get(field)
)
return nestedValue
print(
getNestedObjectValue(
obj={
"name": "ADASDASD",
"properties": {"somefield": {"value": "zxczxcxczxcxzc"}},
},
attr="properties.somefield.value",
)
)
Output
PS C:myprogramssamples> python .sample.py
zxczxcxczxcxzc
I have an object (Person
) that has multiple subobjects (Pet, Residence
) as properties. I want to be able to dynamically set the properties of these subobjects like so:
class Person(object):
def __init__(self):
self.pet = Pet()
self.residence = Residence()
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self,name='Fido',species='Dog'):
self.name = name
self.species = species
class Residence(object):
def __init__(self,type='House',sqft=None):
self.type = type
self.sqft=sqft
if __name__=='__main__':
p=Person()
setattr(p,'pet.name','Sparky')
setattr(p,'residence.type','Apartment')
print p.__dict__
Currently I get the wrong output: {'pet': <__main__.Pet object at 0x10c5ec050>, 'residence': <__main__.Residence object at 0x10c5ec0d0>, 'pet.name': 'Sparky', 'residence.type': 'Apartment'}
As you can see, instead of setting the name
attribute on the Pet
subobject of the Person
, a new attribute pet.name
is created on the Person
.
-
I cannot specify
person.pet
tosetattr()
because different sub-objects will be set by the same method, which parses some text and fills in the object attributes if/when a relevant key is found. -
Is there a easy/builtin way to accomplish this?
-
Or perhaps I need to write a recursive function to parse the string and call
getattr()
multiple times until the necessary subobject is found and then callsetattr()
on that found subobject?
Ok so while typing the question I had an idea of how to do this and it seems to work fine. Here is what I came up with:
def set_attribute(obj, path_string, new_value):
parts = path_string.split('.')
final_attribute_index = len(parts)-1
current_attribute = obj
i = 0
for part in parts:
new_attr = getattr(current_attribute, part, None)
if current_attribute is None:
print 'Error %s not found in %s' % (part, current_attribute)
break
if i == final_attribute_index:
setattr(current_attribute, part, new_value)
current_attribute = new_attr
i+=1
def get_attribute(obj, path_string):
parts = path_string.split('.')
final_attribute_index = len(parts)-1
current_attribute = obj
i = 0
for part in parts:
new_attr = getattr(current_attribute, part, None)
if current_attribute is None:
print 'Error %s not found in %s' % (part, current_attribute)
return None
if i == final_attribute_index:
return getattr(current_attribute, part)
current_attribute = new_attr
i += 1
I guess this solves my question, but I am still curious if there is a better way to do this?
I feel like this has to be something pretty common in OOP and python, so I’m surprised gatattr and setattr do not support this natively.
You could use functools.reduce
:
import functools
def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)
# using wonder's beautiful simplification: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31174295/getattr-and-setattr-on-nested-objects/31174427?noredirect=1#comment86638618_31174427
def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
def _getattr(obj, attr):
return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))
rgetattr
and rsetattr
are drop-in replacements for getattr
and setattr
,
which can also handle dotted attr
strings.
import functools
class Person(object):
def __init__(self):
self.pet = Pet()
self.residence = Residence()
class Pet(object):
def __init__(self,name='Fido',species='Dog'):
self.name = name
self.species = species
class Residence(object):
def __init__(self,type='House',sqft=None):
self.type = type
self.sqft=sqft
def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)
def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
def _getattr(obj, attr):
return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))
if __name__=='__main__':
p = Person()
print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color', 'calico'))
# 'calico'
try:
# Without a default argument, `rgetattr`, like `getattr`, raises
# AttributeError when the dotted attribute is missing
print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color'))
except AttributeError as err:
print(err)
# 'Pet' object has no attribute 'favorite'
rsetattr(p, 'pet.name', 'Sparky')
rsetattr(p, 'residence.type', 'Apartment')
print(p.__dict__)
print(p.pet.name)
# Sparky
print(p.residence.type)
# Apartment
For one parent and one child:
if __name__=='__main__':
p = Person()
parent, child = 'pet.name'.split('.')
setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')
parent, child = 'residence.type'.split('.')
setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')
print p.__dict__
This is simpler than the other answers for this particular use case.
I made a simple version based on ubntu’s answer called magicattr that also works on attrs, lists, and dicts by parsing and walking the ast.
For example, with this class:
class Person:
settings = {
'autosave': True,
'style': {
'height': 30,
'width': 200
},
'themes': ['light', 'dark']
}
def __init__(self, name, age, friends):
self.name = name
self.age = age
self.friends = friends
bob = Person(name="Bob", age=31, friends=[])
jill = Person(name="Jill", age=29, friends=[bob])
jack = Person(name="Jack", age=28, friends=[bob, jill])
You can do this
# Nothing new
assert magicattr.get(bob, 'age') == 31
# Lists
assert magicattr.get(jill, 'friends[0].name') == 'Bob'
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[-1].age') == 29
# Dict lookups
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'settings["style"]["width"]') == 200
# Combination of lookups
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'settings["themes"][-2]') == 'light'
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[-1].settings["themes"][1]') == 'dark'
# Setattr
magicattr.set(bob, 'settings["style"]["width"]', 400)
assert magicattr.get(bob, 'settings["style"]["width"]') == 400
# Nested objects
magicattr.set(bob, 'friends', [jack, jill])
assert magicattr.get(jack, 'friends[0].friends[0]') == jack
magicattr.set(jill, 'friends[0].age', 32)
assert bob.age == 32
It also won’t let you/someone call functions or assign a value since it doesn’t use eval or allow Assign/Call nodes.
with pytest.raises(ValueError) as e:
magicattr.get(bob, 'friends = [1,1]')
# Nice try, function calls are not allowed
with pytest.raises(ValueError):
magicattr.get(bob, 'friends.pop(0)')
unutbu’s answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/31174427/2683842) has a “bug”. After getattr()
fails and is replaced by default
, it continues calling getattr
on default
.
Example: rgetattr(object(), "nothing.imag", 1)
should equal 1
in my opinion, but it returns 0
:
getattr(object(), 'nothing', 1)
== 1.getattr(1, 'imag', 1)
== 0 (since 1 is real and has no complex component).
Solution
I modified rgetattr to return default
at the first missing attribute:
import functools
DELIMITER = "."
def rgetattr(obj, path: str, *default):
"""
:param obj: Object
:param path: 'attr1.attr2.etc'
:param default: Optional default value, at any point in the path
:return: obj.attr1.attr2.etc
"""
attrs = path.split(DELIMITER)
try:
return functools.reduce(getattr, attrs, obj)
except AttributeError:
if default:
return default[0]
raise
I just love recursive functions
def rgetattr(obj,attr):
_this_func = rgetattr
sp = attr.split('.',1)
if len(sp)==1:
l,r = sp[0],''
else:
l,r = sp
obj = getattr(obj,l)
if r:
obj = _this_func(obj,r)
return obj
And a easy to understand three-liner based on jimbo1qaz’s answer, reduced to the very limit:
def rgetattr(obj, path, default):
try:
return functools.reduce(getattr, path.split(), obj)
except AttributeError:
return default
Usage:
>>> class O(object):
... pass
... o = O()
... o.first = O()
... o.first.second = O()
... o.first.second.third = 42
... rgetattr(o, 'first second third', None)
42
Just keep in mind that “space” is not a typical delimiter for this use case.
This should be a
def getNestedAttr(obj,nestedParam):
next = obj
for p in nestedParam.split('.'):
next = getattr(next,p)
return next
class Issue : pass
issue = Issue()
issue.status = Issue()
issue.status.name = "Hello"
getattr(issue,'status.name')
'''
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'Issue' object has no attribute 'status.name'
'''
getNestedAttr(issue,'status.name')
#'Hello'
simple solution
Here’s something similar to ChaimG’s answer, but it works with an arbitrary number of cases. However, it only supports get attributes, not setting them.
requested_attr = 'pet.name'
parent = Person()
sub_names = requested_attr.split('.')
sub = None
for sub_name in sub_names:
try:
sub = parent.__getattribute__(sub_name)
parent = sub
except AttributeError:
raise Exception("The panel doesn't have an attribute that matches your request!")
pets_name = sub
For an out of the box solution, you can use operator.attrgetter
:
from operator import attrgetter
attrgetter(dotted_path)(obj)
Thanks for the accepted answer above. It was helpful.
In case anyone wants to extend the use for hasattr
use the code below:
def rhasattr(obj, attr):
_nested_attrs = attr.split(".")
_curr_obj = obj
for _a in _nested_attrs[:-1]:
if hasattr(_curr_obj, _a):
_curr_obj = getattr(_curr_obj, _a)
else:
return False
return hasattr(_curr_obj, _nested_attrs[-1])
I know this post is pretty old but below code might help some one.
def getNestedObjectValue(obj={}, attr=""):
splittedFields = attr.split(".")
nestedValue = ""
previousValue = ""
for field in splittedFields:
previousValue = nestedValue
nestedValue = (
obj.get(field) if previousValue == "" else previousValue.get(field)
)
return nestedValue
print(
getNestedObjectValue(
obj={
"name": "ADASDASD",
"properties": {"somefield": {"value": "zxczxcxczxcxzc"}},
},
attr="properties.somefield.value",
)
)
Output
PS C:myprogramssamples> python .sample.py
zxczxcxczxcxzc