In python, I can alter the state of an instance by directly assigning to attributes, or by making method calls which alter the state of the attributes:
foo.thing = 'baz'
or:
foo.thing('baz')
Is there a nice way to create a class which would accept both of the above forms which scales to large numbers of attributes that behave this way? (Shortly, I'll show an example of an implementation that I don't particularly like.) If you're thinking that this is a stupid API, let me know, but perhaps a more concrete example is in order. Say I have a Document class. Document could have an attribute title. However, title may want to have some state as well (font,fontsize,justification,...), but the average user might be happy enough just setting the title to a string and being done with it ...
One way to accomplish this would be to:
class Title(object):
def __init__(self,text,font='times',size=12):
self.text = text
self.font = font
self.size = size
def __call__(self,*text,**kwargs):
if(text):
self.text = text[0]
for k,v in kwargs.items():
setattr(self,k,v)
def __str__(self):
return '<title font={font}, size={size}>{text}</title>'.format(text=self.text,size=self.size,font=self.font)
class Document(object):
_special_attr = set(['title'])
def __setattr__(self,k,v):
if k in self._special_attr and hasattr(self,k):
getattr(self,k)(v)
else:
object.__setattr__(self,k,v)
def __init__(self,text="",title=""):
self.title = Title(title)
self.text = text
def __str__(self):
return str(self.title)+'<body>'+self.text+'</body>'
Now I can use this as follows:
doc = Document()
doc.title = "Hello World"
print (str(doc))
doc.title("Goodbye World",font="Helvetica")
print (str(doc))
This implementation seems a little messy though (with __special_attr). Maybe that's because this is a messed up API. I'm not sure. Is there a better way to do this? Or did I leave the beaten path a little too far on this one?
I realize I could use @property for this as well, but that wouldn't scale well at all if I had more than just one attribute which is to behave this way -- I'd need to write a getter and setter for each, yuck.
