Correct usage of a getter/setter for dictionary values

Question

I'm pretty new to Python, so if there's anything here that's flat-out bad, please point it out.

I have an object with this dictionary:

traits = {'happy': 0, 'worker': 0, 'honest': 0}

The value for each trait should be an int in the range 1-10, and new traits should not be allowed to be added. I want getter/setters so I can make sure these constraints are being kept. Here's how I made the getter and setter now:

def getTrait(self, key):
    if key not in self.traits.keys():
        raise KeyError

    return traits[key]

def setTrait(self, key, value):
    if key not in self.traits.keys():
        raise KeyError

    value = int(value)

    if value < 1 or value > 10:
        raise ValueError

    traits[key] = value

I read on this website about the property() method. But I don't see an easy way to make use of it for getting/setting the values inside the dictionary. Is there a better way to do this? Ideally I would like the usage of this object to be obj.traits['happy'] = 14, which would invoke my setter method and throw a ValueError since 14 is over 10.

Answer 1

If you are willing to use syntax like obj['happy'] = 14 then you could use __getitem__ and __setitem__:

def __getitem__(self, key):
    if key not in self.traits.keys():
        raise KeyError
    ... 
    return traits[key]

def __setitem__(self, key, value):
    if key not in self.traits.keys():
        raise KeyError
    ...
    traits[key] = value

If you really do want obj.traits['happy'] = 14 then you could define a subclass of dict and make obj.traits an instance of this subclass. The subclass would then override __getitem__ and __setitem__ (see below).

PS. To subclass dict, inherit from both collections.MutableMapping, and dict. Otherwise, dict.update would not call the new __setitem__.

import collections
class TraitsDict(collections.MutableMapping,dict):
    def __getitem__(self,key):
        return dict.__getitem__(self,key)
    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        value = int(value)
        if not 1 <= value <= 10:
            raise ValueError('{v} not in range [1,10]'.format(v=value))
        dict.__setitem__(self,key,value)
    def __delitem__(self, key):
        dict.__delitem__(self,key)
    def __iter__(self):
        return dict.__iter__(self)
    def __len__(self):
        return dict.__len__(self)
    def __contains__(self, x):
        return dict.__contains__(self,x)

class Person(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.traits=TraitsDict({'happy': 0, 'worker': 0, 'honest': 0})

p=Person()
print(p.traits['happy'])
# 0

p.traits['happy']=1
print(p.traits['happy'])
# 1

p.traits['happy']=14
# ValueError: 14 not in range [1,10]

Answer 2

Some obvious tips come to my mind first:

1. Do not use .keys() method when checking for existence of some key (instead of if key not in self.traits.keys() use if key not in self.traits).
2. Do not explicitly throw KeyError exception - it is thrown if you try to access inexistent key.

Your code could look like this after above changes:

def getTrait(self, key):
    return traits[key]

def setTrait(self, key, value):
    if key not in self.traits:
        raise KeyError

    value = int(value)

    if value < 1 or value > 10:
        raise ValueError

    traits[key] = value

Ps. I did no check the correctness of your code thoroughly - there may be some other issues.

Answer 3

and new traits should not be allowed to be added.

The natural way to do this is to use an object instead of a dictionary, and set the class' __slots__.

The value for each trait should be an int in the range 1-10... I want getter/setters so I can make sure these constraints are being kept.

The natural way to do this is to use an object instead of a dictionary, so that you can write getter/setter logic that's part of the class, and wrap them up as properties. Since all these properties will work the same way, we can do some refactoring to write code that generates a property given an attribute name.

The following is probably over-engineered:

def one_to_ten(attr):
  def get(obj): return getattr(obj, attr)
  def set(obj, val):
    val = int(val)
    if not 1 <= val <= 10: raise ValueError
    setattr(obj, attr, val)
  return property(get, set)

def create_traits_class(*traits):
  class Traits(object):
    __slots__ = ['_' + trait for trait in traits]
    for trait in traits: locals()[trait] = one_to_ten('_' + trait)
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
      for k, v in kwargs.items(): setattr(self, k, v)
      for trait in traits: assert hasattr(self, trait), "Missing trait in init"
    def __repr__(self):
      return 'Traits(%s)' % ', '.join(
        '%s = %s' % (trait, getattr(self, trait)) for trait in traits
      )
  return Traits

example_type = create_traits_class('happy', 'worker', 'honest')
example_instance = example_type(happy=3, worker=8, honest=4)
# and you can set the .traits of some other object to example_instance.