rjgtoys.thing: A Python dict that behaves a bit like a JavaScript object¶

This package implements a little trick that I find handy to keep code tidy when I’m dealing with complicated nested dictionary structures, such as can be returned from REST APIs.

It implements a subclass of dict that behaves a little like a Javascript object, insofar as ‘item’ style access - x['foo'] - and ‘attribute’ style access - x.foo - are equivalent, and can be used interchangeably, subject of course to the limitation imposed by Python syntax itself, that an attribute name in x.name has to be a constant.

So if you have an object like this, perhaps the result of doing an API call:

data = {
   "result" : {
      "status": "success",
      "value": {
         "type": "person",
         "name": "Bob",
         "address": {
            "street": "High Street",
            "town": "Chigley"
          }
      }
    }
  }

The instead of having to write this:

print("The {type} called {name} lives in {town}".format(
      type=data['result']['value']['type'],
      name=data['result']['value']['name'],
      town=data['result']['value']['address']['town']
))

You can write this:

print("The {type} called {name} lives in {town}".format(
      type=data.result.value.type,
      name=data.result.value.name,
      town=data.result.value.address.town
))