Converting user input to variable names (python 2.7)

Question

Let's say Bob enters his name, 'Bob Jones,' into a Tkinter text entry field. Later, I want to be able to access his name like this:

BobJones = {
'name':'Bob Jones',
'pet\'s name':'Fido'
}

How do I make it so I assign whatever Bob inputs as a new variable without having to manually write it in?

Thanks in advance.

[keep your data out of your variable names](http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201112/keep_data_out_of_your_variable_names.html) — roippi, Apr 09 '14 at 00:22
So you will have variables whose names aren't known when the program is written, and no other way of finding their names once they have been created? How could this possibly be a good idea? — Scott Hunter, Apr 09 '14 at 00:34
@ScottHunter how do you make "new users" then? I'm pretty new to this :/ — Eli Dinkelspiel, Apr 09 '14 at 00:36
@eli_dink it *does* help. You're just focused on [how to accomplish your particular solution to the problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem), rather than solving the actual problem. — roippi, Apr 09 '14 at 00:36
@ooga so I'd want it to be users = {'Bob Jones':{'pet\'s name':'Fido'}} etc.? — Eli Dinkelspiel, Apr 09 '14 at 00:37
@roippi this was a general problem, nothing like my actual thing I'm working on, which is data visualization — Eli Dinkelspiel, Apr 09 '14 at 00:39

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '14 at 00:42

1

To expand on the comments above, I think you'd want something more like this:

# Define the user class - what data do we store about users:

class User(object):
    def __init__(self, user_name, first_pet):
        self.user_name = user_name
        self.first_pet = first_pet

# Now gather the actual list of users

users = []
while someCondition:
    user_name, first_pet = getUserDetails()
    users.append(User(user_name, first_pet))

# Now we can use it

print "The first users name is:"
print users[0].user_name

So you're defining the class (think of it as a template) for the Users, then creating new User objects, one for each person, and storing them in the users list.

answered Apr 09 '14 at 00:42

Tom Dalton

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wow, I can't believe I forgot about classes! thanks a lot, man – Eli Dinkelspiel Apr 09 '14 at 00:50
No problem. If you're after sometihng lighter-weight than this (and the data will never be changed 'immutable'), you could use Named Tuples instead of classes, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2970608/what-are-named-tuples-in-python – Tom Dalton Apr 09 '14 at 00:51
No I definitely need to use classes. I'm storing ~50 data points per user. – Eli Dinkelspiel Apr 09 '14 at 00:53

Converting user input to variable names (python 2.7)

1 Answers1