Getting lazy with decorators

J

Josh English

I'm creating a cmd.Cmd class, and I have developed a helper method to easily handle help_xxx methods.

I'm trying to figure out if there is an even lazier way I could do this with decorators.

Here is the code:
*********************
import cmd


def add_help(func):
if not hasattr(func, 'im_class'):
return func #probably should raise an error
cls = func.im_class
setattr(cls, func.im_func.__name__.replace("do","help"), None)

return func


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in func.__doc__.splitlines()))

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()

print c.help_done


*********************

This generates "AttributeError: BaseCmd instance has no attribute 'help_done'"

The show_help method is the shortcut I want to use (I'm pretty sure it's from Doug Hellman's site). I'm wondering if it's possible to use a decorator such as add_help to automatically create the appropriate help_xxx function.

In the decorator, I can get the function and the name of the class, but I can't find the instance of the class that the method is attached to. Maybe this is just one step of lazy too far.


Am I right in thinking that I can't do this? There is no way to access the class instance from the method?
 
P

Peter Otten

Josh said:
I'm creating a cmd.Cmd class, and I have developed a helper method to
easily handle help_xxx methods.

I'm trying to figure out if there is an even lazier way I could do this
with decorators.

Here is the code:
*********************
import cmd


def add_help(func):
if not hasattr(func, 'im_class'):
return func #probably should raise an error
cls = func.im_class
setattr(cls, func.im_func.__name__.replace("do","help"), None)

return func


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in
func.__doc__.splitlines()))

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()

print c.help_done


*********************

This generates "AttributeError: BaseCmd instance has no attribute
'help_done'"

The show_help method is the shortcut I want to use (I'm pretty sure it's
from Doug Hellman's site). I'm wondering if it's possible to use a
decorator such as add_help to automatically create the appropriate
help_xxx function.

In the decorator, I can get the function and the name of the class, but I
can't find the instance of the class that the method is attached to.
Maybe this is just one step of lazy too far.


Am I right in thinking that I can't do this? There is no way to access the
class instance from the method?

You cannot access a class instance because even the class itself doesn't
exist yet. You could get hold of the class namespace with sys._getframe(),

def add_help(f):
exec """\
def help_%s(self):
f = getattr(self, %r)
self.show_help(f)
""" % (f.__name__[3:], f.__name__) in sys._getframe(1).f_locals
return f

but here's a simpler approach:

import cmd

def add_help(f):
def help(self):
self.show_help(f)
f.help = help
return f


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in
func.__doc__.splitlines()))

def __getattr__(self, name):
if name.startswith("help_"):
helpfunc = getattr(self, "do_" + name[5:]).help
setattr(self.__class__, name, helpfunc)
return getattr(self, name)
raise AttributeError

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()
c.cmdloop()
 
J

Josh English

You cannot access a class instance because even the class itself doesn't
exist yet. You could get hold of the class namespace with sys._getframe(),

def add_help(f):
exec """\
def help_%s(self):
f = getattr(self, %r)
self.show_help(f)
""" % (f.__name__[3:], f.__name__) in sys._getframe(1).f_locals
return f

but here's a simpler approach:

import cmd

def add_help(f):
def help(self):
self.show_help(f)
f.help = help
return f


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in
func.__doc__.splitlines()))

def __getattr__(self, name):
if name.startswith("help_"):
helpfunc = getattr(self, "do_" + name[5:]).help
setattr(self.__class__, name, helpfunc)
return getattr(self, name)
raise AttributeError

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()
c.cmdloop()


Okay. If I understand this, you are adding a help attribute to the class method. The help attribute is itself a function.

There is nothing in the documentation (that I have found) that points to this solution. Even after reading the do_help method in the cmd.Cmd source, I don't see this as working.

Yet it works.

How?
 
J

Josh English

You cannot access a class instance because even the class itself doesn't
exist yet. You could get hold of the class namespace with sys._getframe(),

def add_help(f):
exec """\
def help_%s(self):
f = getattr(self, %r)
self.show_help(f)
""" % (f.__name__[3:], f.__name__) in sys._getframe(1).f_locals
return f

but here's a simpler approach:

import cmd

def add_help(f):
def help(self):
self.show_help(f)
f.help = help
return f


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in
func.__doc__.splitlines()))

def __getattr__(self, name):
if name.startswith("help_"):
helpfunc = getattr(self, "do_" + name[5:]).help
setattr(self.__class__, name, helpfunc)
return getattr(self, name)
raise AttributeError

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()
c.cmdloop()


Okay. If I understand this, you are adding a help attribute to the class method. The help attribute is itself a function.

There is nothing in the documentation (that I have found) that points to this solution. Even after reading the do_help method in the cmd.Cmd source, I don't see this as working.

Yet it works.

How?
 
P

Peter Otten

Josh said:
You cannot access a class instance because even the class itself doesn't
exist yet. You could get hold of the class namespace with
sys._getframe(),

def add_help(f):
exec """\
def help_%s(self):
f = getattr(self, %r)
self.show_help(f)
""" % (f.__name__[3:], f.__name__) in sys._getframe(1).f_locals
return f

but here's a simpler approach:

import cmd

def add_help(f):
def help(self):
self.show_help(f)
f.help = help
return f


class BaseCmd(cmd.Cmd):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
cmd.Cmd.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

def show_help(self, func):
print "\n".join((line.strip() for line in
func.__doc__.splitlines()))

def __getattr__(self, name):
if name.startswith("help_"):
helpfunc = getattr(self, "do_" + name[5:]).help
setattr(self.__class__, name, helpfunc)
return getattr(self, name)
raise AttributeError

@add_help
def do_done(self, line):
"""done
Quits this and goes to higher level or quits the application.
I mean, what else do you expect?
"""
return True

if __name__=='__main__':
c = BaseCmd()
c.cmdloop()


Okay. If I understand this, you are adding a help attribute to the class
method. The help attribute is itself a function.

There is nothing in the documentation (that I have found) that points to
this solution.

That's because I "invented" it.

@deco
def func(...): ...

is equivalent to

def func(...): ...
func = deco(func)

so only one assignment is ever made in the enclosing namespace. If you have
more targets you have to put them somewhere else. Making the help_xxx()
function an attribute of do_xxx() seemed the obvious choice.
Even after reading the do_help method in the cmd.Cmd
source, I don't see this as working.

do_help(name)

looks up a "help_" + name method and invokes it if that lookup succeeds.
Yet it works.

In the example above do_help() looks for a help_done attribute which doesn't
exist. As a fallback the __getattr__() method is invoked with the
"help_done" argument, finds that the name starts with "help_" and proceeds
with
helpfunc = getattr(self, "do_" + name[5:]).help

i. e. it looks for getattr(self, "do_help") which does exist and then stores
its help attribute (if that doesn't exist an AttributeError is implicitly
raised) in helpfunc. helpfunc is then added as "help_done" to the class

and looked up again in the instance:

This time it exists and from the class attribute help_done an instance
method is created, returned from __getattr__() and invoked by do_help().

PS: Stefan is probably right that you should just override do_help()
 
J

Josh English

That's because I "invented" it.

Oh bother. The lines I completely overlooked were in your __getattr__ override.

Boy is my face red.

On further experimentation, adding a do_xxx command without the decorator still works...ish. The undecorated do_xxx is still considered to have a help function, and it prints the raw docstring (instead of using the show_help method to clean it up).

Josh
 
J

Josh English

That's because I "invented" it.

Oh bother. The lines I completely overlooked were in your __getattr__ override.

Boy is my face red.

On further experimentation, adding a do_xxx command without the decorator still works...ish. The undecorated do_xxx is still considered to have a help function, and it prints the raw docstring (instead of using the show_help method to clean it up).

Josh
 

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