Using variable to get list from imported module

Question

I am trying to make a script where my zoom classes would auto open based on the schedule.

I made a module named schedule which contains separate lists of each weekday's routine.

In the main file, I made a dictionary where the key is the integer value we get after using datetime.today().weekday() and the value is its corresponding weekday's name such as {0:monday}

In my function, if today's weekday integer value matches with the dictionary key, then it will call its corresponding value weekday from the schedule module. But when I run it, it's saying " AttributeError: module 'schedule' has no attribute 'value' "

Here's part of my code for reference

#Monday=0, Tuesday=1 , Wednesday=2, Thursday=3, Sun=6.
weekday = {'1':'tuesday',
       '2':'wednesday',
       '3':'thursday',
       '6':'sunday',
       '0':'monday'}
#Function for opening and closing link in webbrowser.
def open_webbrowser():
global activation
day = datetime.today().weekday()
for key, value in weekday.items():
    if int(key) == day:
        for i in schedule.value:...

And here's the schedule module. I replaced the original links with 'zoomlink'

#Class routine.
sunday = [
[zoomlink,'09:01','09:39'],
[zoomlink,'10:01','10:39'],
[zoomlink,'11:01','11:39'],
[zoomlink,'12:01','12:39']
]
monday = [...]
tuesday = [...]
wednesday = [...]
thursday = [...]

Kushan Gunasekera · Answer 1 · 2021-01-26T01:52:30.007

for the below part,

for i in schedule.value:...

replace with,

for i in getattr(schedule, value):...

It should work. Here is the reason, in the for loop you'll get value as tuesday, wednesday, thursday, sunday or monday and it's a string. So if you access it like schedule.tuesday, definitely it should be worked. But unfortunately, you are accessing schedule.value and the value also a variable and there is no attribute called value in schedule module. So one of the easiest and more pythonic solutions is to use getattr(). I took below answer from What is getattr() exactly and how do I use it? the question.

getattr(object, 'x') is completely equivalent to object.x.

There are only two cases where getattr can be useful.

you can't write object.x, because you don't know in advance which attribute you want (it comes from a string). Very useful for meta-programming.

you want to provide a default value. object.y will raise an AttributeError if there's no y. But getattr(object, 'y', 5) will return 5.

Now you'll get a better understanding to use the getattr() function and for more information check the official documentation or the question that I've mentioned earlier.

You're welcome @m4rk_Henry_ftw, just updated my answer to know more about what you did wrong and this the pythonic way to solve such a situation. If you didn't get any point or if you need anything to know don't hesitate to comment below, happy to help you! — Kushan Gunasekera, Jan 26 '21 at 01:56

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '21 at 01:25

The reason your code isn't working is because schedule.value tries to get a variable called value in the schedule module, when you meant for it to expand to something like schedule.sunday.

One way you can fix this is by encapsulating your lists in a dictionary, where you can access the lists with a string index such as "sunday" or "monday". If you were to do this, your schedule module would look something like this:

zoomLinkData = {
    "sunday": [
        [zoomlink,'09:01','09:39'],
        [zoomlink,'10:01','10:39'],
        [zoomlink,'11:01','11:39'],
        [zoomlink,'12:01','12:39']
    ],
    "monday": [...],
    "...": [...]
}

In order to access the data in this dictionary in your loop, you could do this:

for key, value in weekday.items():
    if int(key) == day:
        for i in schedule.zoomLinkData[value]:...

Using variable to get list from imported module

2 Answers2