Dynamically Adding @Property in Python

How to add property to a class dynamically?

I suppose I should expand this answer, now that I'm older and wiser and know what's going on. Better late than never.

You can add a property to a class dynamically. But that's the catch: you have to add it to the class.

>>> class Foo(object):
...     pass
... 
>>> foo = Foo()
>>> foo.a = 3
>>> Foo.b = property(lambda self: self.a + 1)
>>> foo.b
4

A property is actually a simple implementation of a thing called a descriptor. It's an object that provides custom handling for a given attribute, on a given class. Kinda like a way to factor a huge if tree out of __getattribute__.

When I ask for foo.b in the example above, Python sees that the b defined on the class implements the descriptor protocol—which just means it's an object with a __get__, __set__, or __delete__ method. The descriptor claims responsibility for handling that attribute, so Python calls Foo.b.__get__(foo, Foo), and the return value is passed back to you as the value of the attribute. In the case of property, each of these methods just calls the fget, fset, or fdel you passed to the property constructor.

Descriptors are really Python's way of exposing the plumbing of its entire OO implementation. In fact, there's another type of descriptor even more common than property.

>>> class Foo(object):
...     def bar(self):
...         pass
... 
>>> Foo().bar
<bound method Foo.bar of <__main__.Foo object at 0x7f2a439d5dd0>>
>>> Foo().bar.__get__
<method-wrapper '__get__' of instancemethod object at 0x7f2a43a8a5a0>

The humble method is just another kind of descriptor. Its __get__ tacks on the calling instance as the first argument; in effect, it does this:

def __get__(self, instance, owner):
    return functools.partial(self.function, instance)

Anyway, I suspect this is why descriptors only work on classes: they're a formalization of the stuff that powers classes in the first place. They're even the exception to the rule: you can obviously assign descriptors to a class, and classes are themselves instances of type! In fact, trying to read Foo.bar still calls property.__get__; it's just idiomatic for descriptors to return themselves when accessed as class attributes.

I think it's pretty cool that virtually all of Python's OO system can be expressed in Python. :)

Oh, and I wrote a wordy blog post about descriptors a while back if you're interested.

Dynamically adding @property in python

The property descriptor objects needs to live in the class, not in the instance, to have the effect you desire. If you don't want to alter the existing class in order to avoid altering the behavior of other instances, you'll need to make a "per-instance class", e.g.:

def addprop(inst, name, method):
  cls = type(inst)
  if not hasattr(cls, '__perinstance'):
    cls = type(cls.__name__, (cls,), {})
    cls.__perinstance = True
    inst.__class__ = cls
  setattr(cls, name, property(method))

I'm marking these special "per-instance" classes with an attribute to avoid needlessly making multiple ones if you're doing several addprop calls on the same instance.

Note that, like for other uses of property, you need the class in play to be new-style (typically obtained by inheriting directly or indirectly from object), not the ancient legacy style (dropped in Python 3) that's assigned by default to a class without bases.

Pythonic way to dynamically add properties and setters

If you want to do something that looks like property access, but under the performs a function, you want a descriptor. A descriptor is an object that looks like a property but intercepts get and set calls and lets you run whatever code you need. Here's a stackoverflow question with an example that uses descriptors to change an object's translation using descriptors:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/22292961/1936075

You could use the same trick to create, get and set custom attributes in a more readable, less cmds-heavy fashion.

More code here.

How do I dynamically create properties in Python?

Don't use properties but implement the following methods:

• __getattr__(self, name)
• __setattr__(self, name, value)
• __delattr__(self, name)

See http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#customizing-attribute-access

Your __getattr__ method could look like this:

def __getattr__(self, name):
    try:
        return self.__dict[name]
    except KeyError:
        msg = "'{0}' object has no attribute '{1}'"
        raise AttributeError(msg.format(type(self).__name__, name))

Dynamically add properties to instances in Python

You can actually do this easily by just changing the name of your function:

>>> class Wrapper(object):
...     def __init__(self, data):
...         self.data = data
...     def __getattr__(self, attr):
...         return [d[attr] for d in self.data]
... 
>>> Wrapper([{'x': 23}, {'x': 42}, {'x': 5}]).x
[23, 42, 5]

The __getattr__() special method is called whenever you request an attribute that doesn't exist. The only potential issue here is that you could override this by assigning an attribute. If you need to avoid that, simply override __setattr__() as well to stop that from happening.

Dynamically adding a property to a class

I don't know why you use operator.methodcaller here.
When you call f.spam=2, it will invoke setter.
setter = operator.methodcaller('set_value', name) means setter(r) = r.set_value(name). Make no sense in your case.

I suggest you write this way, using @classmethod:

class Foo(object):

    @classmethod
    def get_value(self, name):
        # read and return value from database
        return -1
    @classmethod
    def set_value(self,  name, value):
        # store value in database
        pass

def add_metadata_property(name):
    setattr(Foo, name, property(Foo.get_value, Foo.set_value))

add_metadata_property('spam')
f = Foo()
f.spam # works!
f.spam = 2

If this helped you, please confirm it as the answer. Thanks!

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