python - 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?

Answer 1

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://stackguides.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

Answer 2

For an out of the box solution, you can use operator.attrgetter:

from operator import attrgetter
attrgetter(dotted_path)(obj)

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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)')

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

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])