SimpleNamespace() is really good at giving attribute style-access. I would like to make that functionality available to the JSON module (or just about anything else that accepts a custom dict) by adding the magic methods for mappings so that this works:
catalog = json.load(f, object_hook=SimpleNamespace) print(catalog['clothing']['mens']['shoes']['extra_wide']['quantity']) # currently possible with dict() print(catalog.clothing.mens.shoes.extra_wide.quantity]) # proposed with SimpleNamespace() print(catalog.clothing.boys['3t'].tops.quantity # would also be supported I've already seen something like this in production; however, people are having to write custom subclasses to do it. This is kind of bummer because the custom subclasses are a pain to write, are non-standard, and are generally somewhat slow. I would like to see a high-quality version this made more broadly available. The core idea is keep the simple attribute access but make it easier to load data programmatically: >>> ns = SimpleNamespace(roses='red', violets='blue') >>> thing = input() sugar >>> quality = input() sweet >>> setattr(ns, thing, quality) # current >>> ns['sugar'] = 'sweet' # proposed If the PEP 584 __ior__ method were supported, updating a SimpleNamespace would be much cleaner: ns |= some_dict I posted an issue on the tracker: https://bugs.python.org/issue40284 . There was a suggestion to create a different type for this, but I don't see the point in substantially duplicating everything SimpleNamespace already does just so we can add some supporting dunder methods. Please add more commentary so we can figure-out the best way to offer this powerful functionality. Raymond _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/JOMND56PJGRN7FQQLLCWONE5Z7R2EKXW/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/