As you've seen, FileInfo is a class that acts like a dictionary. To explore this further, let's look at the UserDict class in the UserDict module, which is the ancestor of the FileInfo class. This is nothing special; the class is written in Python and stored in a .py file, just like any other Python code. In particular, it's stored in the lib directory in your Python installation.
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| In the ActivePython IDE on Windows, you can quickly open any module in your library path by selecting -> (Ctrl-L). | |
Example 5.9. Defining the UserDict Class
class UserDict:def __init__(self, dict=None):
self.data = {}
if dict is not None: self.update(dict)
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Note that UserDict is a base class, not inherited from any other class. |
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This is the __init__ method that you overrode in the FileInfo class. Note that the argument list in this ancestor class is different than the descendant. That's okay; each subclass can have its own set of arguments, as long as it calls the ancestor with the correct arguments. Here the ancestor class has a way to define initial values (by passing a dictionary in the dict argument) which the FileInfo does not use. |
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Python supports data attributes (called “instance variables” in Java and Powerbuilder, and “member variables” in C++). Data attributes are pieces of data held by a specific instance of a class. In this case, each instance of UserDict will have a data attribute data. To reference this attribute from code outside the class, you qualify it with the instance name, instance.data, in the same way that you qualify a function with its module name. To reference a data attribute from within the class, you use self as the qualifier. By convention, all data attributes are initialized to reasonable values in the __init__ method. However, this is not required, since data attributes, like local variables, spring into existence when they are first assigned a value. |
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The update method is a dictionary duplicator: it copies all the keys and values from one dictionary to another. This does not clear the target dictionary first; if the target dictionary already has some keys, the ones from the source dictionary will be overwritten, but others will be left untouched. Think of update as a merge function, not a copy function. |
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This is a syntax you may not have seen before (I haven't used it in the examples in this book). It's an if statement, but instead of having an indented block starting on the next line, there is just a single statement on the same line, after the colon. This is perfectly legal syntax, which is just a shortcut you can use when you have only one statement in a block. (It's like specifying a single statement without braces in C++.) You can use this syntax, or you can have indented code on subsequent lines, but you can't do both for the same block. |
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| Java and Powerbuilder support function overloading by argument list, i.e. one class can have multiple methods with the same name but a different number of arguments, or arguments of different types. Other languages (most notably PL/SQL) even support function overloading by argument name; i.e. one class can have multiple methods with the same name and the same number of arguments of the same type but different argument names. Python supports neither of these; it has no form of function overloading whatsoever. Methods are defined solely by their name, and there can be only one method per class with a given name. So if a descendant class has an __init__ method, it always overrides the ancestor __init__ method, even if the descendant defines it with a different argument list. And the same rule applies to any other method. | |
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| Guido, the original author of Python, explains method overriding this way: "Derived classes may override methods of their base classes. Because methods have no special privileges when calling other methods of the same object, a method of a base class that calls another method defined in the same base class, may in fact end up calling a method of a derived class that overrides it. (For C++ programmers: all methods in Python are effectively virtual.)" If that doesn't make sense to you (it confuses the hell out of me), feel free to ignore it. I just thought I'd pass it along. | |
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| Always assign an initial value to all of an instance's data attributes in the __init__ method. It will save you hours of debugging later, tracking down AttributeError exceptions because you're referencing uninitialized (and therefore non-existent) attributes. | |
Example 5.10. UserDict Normal Methods
def clear(self): self.data.clear()
def copy(self):
if self.__class__ is UserDict:
return UserDict(self.data)
import copy
return copy.copy(self)
def keys(self): return self.data.keys()
def items(self): return self.data.items()
def values(self): return self.data.values()
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clear is a normal class method; it is publicly available to be called by anyone at any time. Notice that clear, like all class methods, has self as its first argument. (Remember that you don't include self when you call the method; it's something that Python adds for you.) Also note the basic technique of this wrapper class: store a real dictionary (data) as a data attribute, define all the methods that a real dictionary has, and have each class method redirect to the corresponding method on the real dictionary. (In case you'd forgotten, a dictionary's clear method deletes all of its keys and their associated values.) |
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The copy method of a real dictionary returns a new dictionary that is an exact duplicate of the original (all the same key-value pairs). But UserDict can't simply redirect to self.data.copy, because that method returns a real dictionary, and what you want is to return a new instance that is the same class as self. |
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You use the __class__ attribute to see if self is a UserDict; if so, you're golden, because you know how to copy a UserDict: just create a new UserDict and give it the real dictionary that you've squirreled away in self.data. Then you immediately return the new UserDict you don't even get to the import copy on the next line. |
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If self.__class__ is not UserDict, then self must be some subclass of UserDict (like maybe FileInfo), in which case life gets trickier. UserDict doesn't know how to make an exact copy of one of its descendants; there could, for instance, be other data attributes defined in the subclass, so you would need to iterate through them and make sure to copy all of them. Luckily, Python comes with a module to do exactly this, and it's called copy. I won't go into the details here (though it's a wicked cool module, if you're ever inclined to dive into it on your own). Suffice it to say that copy can copy arbitrary Python objects, and that's how you're using it here. |
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The rest of the methods are straightforward, redirecting the calls to the built-in methods on self.data. |
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| In versions of Python prior to 2.2, you could not directly subclass built-in datatypes like strings, lists, and dictionaries. To compensate for this, Python comes with wrapper classes that mimic the behavior of these built-in datatypes: UserString, UserList, and UserDict. Using a combination of normal and special methods, the UserDict class does an excellent imitation of a dictionary. In Python 2.2 and later, you can inherit classes directly from built-in datatypes like dict. An example of this is given in the examples that come with this book, in fileinfo_fromdict.py. | |
In Python, you can inherit directly from the dict built-in datatype, as shown in this example. There are three differences here compared to the UserDict version.
Example 5.11. Inheriting Directly from Built-In Datatype dict
class FileInfo(dict):
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The first difference is that you don't need to import the UserDict module, since dict is a built-in datatype and is always available. The second is that you are inheriting from dict directly, instead of from UserDict.UserDict. |
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The third difference is subtle but important. Because of the way UserDict works internally, it requires you to manually call its __init__ method to properly initialize its internal data structures. dict does not work like this; it is not a wrapper, and it requires no explicit initialization. |
Further Reading on UserDict
- Python Library Reference documents the UserDict module and the copy module.