using exec() to instantiate a new object.

[RyanN]

Hello,

I'm trying to teach myself OOP to do a data project involving
hierarchical data structures.

I've come up with an analogy for testing involving objects for
continents, countries, and states where each object contains some
attributes one of which is a list of objects. E.g. a country will
contain an attribute population and another countries which is a list
of country objects. Anyways, here is what I came up with at first:

class continent(object):
def __init__(self,continent_name):
self.name = continent_name
self.countries = []
def addCountry(self,country_name):
self.countries.append(country_name)
def listCountries(self):
for country in self.countries:
print country.name, "pop:",country.population,", states:"
country.listStates()

class country(object):
def __init__(self,name):
self.name = name
self.population = 0
self.states = []
def addState(self,state_name):
self.states.append(state_name)

def listStates(self):
for state in self.states:
print " ",state.name,"pop:",state.population
state.stateInfo()

class state(object):
def __init__(self,state_name):
self.name = state_name
self.color = 'unknown'
self.counties = []
self.population = 0
def addCounty(self,county):
self.counties.append(county)
def stateInfo(self):
print " color:",self.color
print " counties",self.counties[:]


NAm = continent('NAm')
usa= country('usa')
canada = country('canada')
mexico = country('mexico')
florida = state('florida')
maine = state('maine')
california = state('california')
quebec = state('quebec')

NAm.addCountry(usa)
NAm.addCountry(canada)
NAm.addCountry(mexico)
usa.addState(maine)
usa.addState(california)
usa.addState(florida)
canada.addState(quebec)
florida.addCounty('dade')
florida.addCounty('broward')
maine.addCounty('hancock')
california.addCounty('marin')

florida.population = 1000
california.population = 2000
maine.population = 500
quebec.population = 1000
florida.color = maine.color = california.color = 'blue'
NAm.listCountries()

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
so this works but is far more cumbersome than it should be.
I would like to create an object when I add it

so I wouldn't have to do:
usa= country('usa')
NAm.addCountry(usa)

I could just do
NAm.addCountry('usa')

which would first create a country object then add it to a countries
list

to do this I tried:

def addCountry(self,country_name):
# create an instance of country
exec(country_name + "= country('" + country_name + "')")
# Add this new instance of a country to a list
exec("self.countries.append(" + country_name + ")")

Which doesn't give an error, but doesn't seem to create an instance of
the country object.

Does this make sense? Can this be done?
For my real project, I won't know the names and quantities of objects.
They will be highly variable and based on data contained in the
"parent" object.

Thanks

 

[Patrick Mullen]

to do this I tried:

def addCountry(self,country_name):
# create an instance of country
exec(country_name + "= country('" + country_name + "')")
# Add this new instance of a country to a list
exec("self.countries.append(" + country_name + ")")

Don't use exec. It's quite dangerous, and in your case is making
things much more complex than necessary. A much simpler way to do
what you want:

def addCountry(self,country_name):
self.countries.append(country(country_name))

There is no need to bind the result of "country(country_name)" to a name at all.

 

[Aaron Brady]

Hello,

I'm trying to teach myself OOP to do a data project involving
hierarchical data structures.

I've come up with an analogy for testing involving objects for
continents, countries, and states where each object contains some
attributes one of which is a list of objects. E.g. a country will
contain an attribute population and another countries which is a list
of country objects. Anyways, here is what I came up with at first: snip

NAm = continent('NAm')
usa= country('usa')
canada = country('canada')
mexico = country('mexico')
florida = state('florida')
maine = state('maine')
california = state('california')
quebec = state('quebec')

NAm.addCountry(usa)
NAm.addCountry(canada)
NAm.addCountry(mexico)
usa.addState(maine)
usa.addState(california)
usa.addState(florida)
canada.addState(quebec)
florida.addCounty('dade')
florida.addCounty('broward')
maine.addCounty('hancock')
california.addCounty('marin') snip

so this works but is far more cumbersome than it should be.
I would like to create an object when I add it

so I wouldn't have to do:
usa= country('usa')
NAm.addCountry(usa)

I could just do
NAm.addCountry('usa')

which would first create a country object then add it to a countries
list

snip

One option is to add the names to a blank object as attributes, using
setattr. Then you can access them in almost the same way... they're
just in their own namespace. Other options would be to add them to a
separate dictionary (name -> object). This example is kind of cool,
as well as nicely instructive.
.... def __init__( self, name ):
.... setattr( blank, name, self )
.... self.name= name
....<__main__.Blank instance at 0x00B40FD0>

You don't have to call the container object 'blank', of course, or its
class for that matter. I do because that's how it starts out: blank.
Under the hood it's just a plain old dictionary with extra syntax for
accessing its contents.

 

[RyanN]

Thank you both, I knew there had to be a good way of doing this.

-Ryan

 

[RyanN]

Thank you both, I knew there had to be a good way of doing this.

-Ryan

Just an update. I used dictionaries to hold objects and their names.
I'm beginning to understand better. Now to apply this to my actual
problem. Here's the code I ended up with:

class continent(object):
'''
A continent has a name and a dictionary of countries
'''
def __init__(self,continent_name):
self.name = continent_name
self.countries = {} #countries is a dictionary of country name
and object
def addCountry(self,country_name,population = 0):
self.countries[country_name] = country(country_name) #Create a
new instance of country() and add it to dictionary
self.countries[country_name].population = population #Set
country population
def addState(self,country_name,state_name,population = 0):
if country_name in self.countries:

self.countries[country_name].addState(state_name,population)
else: #This state must be in a new country
self.addCountry(country_name)
self.addState(country_name,state_name,population)
def listCountries(self):
for a_country in self.countries:
print a_country,
"pop:",self.countries[a_country].population,", states:"
self.countries[a_country].listStates()

class country(object):
'''
A country has a name, a population and a dictionary of states
'''
def __init__(self,name):
self.name = name
self.population = 0
self.states = {} #states is a dictionary of state name and
object
def addState(self,state_name,population = 0):
self.states[state_name] = state(state_name) #Create a new
instance of state() and add it to dictionary
self.states[state_name].population = population
self.population += population #Add this state's population to
the country's

def listStates(self):
#print self.states[:]
for a_state in self.states:
self.states[a_state].stateInfo()

class state(object):
'''
A state has a name, color, and a population
'''
def __init__(self,state_name):
self.name = state_name
self.color = 'unknown'
self.population = 0
def stateInfo(self):
print " ",self.name,"pop:",self.population,
"color:",self.color

#Now some examples of how to set and access this information
NAm = continent('NAm') #First we add our continent
NAm.addCountry('canada',700) #Now add a a country to NAm
NAm.addState('usa','maine',400) #We can add a state even if we haven't
added the country yet
NAm.addState('usa','california',2000)
NAm.addState('canada','quebec',700) # I know it's actually a province
NAm.addState('mexico','QR',550)
usa = NAm.countries['usa'] # we can make things easier on ourselves
usa.population = 5000 #short for: NAm.countries['usa'].population =
5000
usa.addState('florida') #Another way to add a state, we can set
population seperately
NAm.countries['usa'].states['florida'].population = 2000
for any_state in usa.states: #Set an attribute for all state objects
usa.states[any_state].color = 'blue'
NAm.listCountries() # Generates a report
# three ways to get to print the same information
print NAm.countries['usa'].states['maine'].name,
NAm.countries['usa'].states['maine'].population
print usa.states['maine'].name, usa.states['maine'].population # We
already assigned usa to NAm.countries['usa']
maine = usa.states['maine']
print maine.name, maine.population

 

[George Sakkis]

Just an update. I used dictionaries to hold objects and their names.
I'm beginning to understand better. Now to apply this to my actual
problem. Here's the code I ended up with:

That's fine, but unless you add functionality that *does* actually
something with all these data, there's not much value going with an
OO approach compared to using plain old data structures (e.g.
[default]dicts and [named]tuples).

George