I find functools.partial extremely useful, but I would like to be able to freeze the arguments out of order (the argument you want to freeze is not always the first), and I would like to be able to apply this to several methods in the class at once to make the proxy An object that has the same methods as the main object, except that some of its parameter parameters are frozen (think of it as a partial generalization applicable to classes). And I would prefer to do this without editing the original object, just as a partial one does not change its original function.
I managed to build a version of functools.partial called "bind", which allows me to specify the parameters out of order, passing them by the keyword argument. This part works:
>>> def foo(x, y):
... print x, y
...
>>> bar = bind(foo, y=3)
>>> bar(2)
2 3
But my proxy class is not working, and I'm not sure why:
>>> class Foo(object):
... def bar(self, x, y):
... print x, y
...
>>> a = Foo()
>>> b = PureProxy(a, bar=bind(Foo.bar, y=3))
>>> b.bar(2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bar() takes exactly 3 arguments (2 given)
I'm probably doing it all wrong, because I'm just going from what I put together from free documentation, blogs and running dir () in all parts. Suggestions on how to do this work, as well as on the best ways to implement it, will be appreciated;) One detail that I'm not sure about is how all this should interact with descriptors. The code follows.
from types import MethodType
class PureProxy(object):
def __init__(self, underlying, **substitutions):
self.underlying = underlying
for name in substitutions:
subst_attr = substitutions[name]
if hasattr(subst_attr, "underlying"):
setattr(self, name, MethodType(subst_attr, self, PureProxy))
def __getattribute__(self, name):
return getattr(object.__getattribute__(self, "underlying"), name)
def bind(f, *args, **kwargs):
""" Lets you freeze arguments of a function be certain values. Unlike
functools.partial, you can freeze arguments by name, which has the bonus
of letting you freeze them out of order. args will be treated just like
partial, but kwargs will properly take into account if you are specifying
a regular argument by name. """
argspec = inspect.getargspec(f)
argdict = copy(kwargs)
if hasattr(f, "im_func"):
f = f.im_func
args_idx = 0
for arg in argspec.args:
if args_idx >= len(args):
break
argdict[arg] = args[args_idx]
args_idx += 1
num_plugged = args_idx
def new_func(*inner_args, **inner_kwargs):
args_idx = 0
for arg in argspec.args[num_plugged:]:
if arg in argdict:
continue
if args_idx >= len(inner_args):
break
argdict[arg] = inner_args[args_idx]
args_idx += 1
f(**dict(argdict, **inner_kwargs))
new_func.underlying = f
return new_func
Update: in case someone can win, here is the final implementation I went with:
from types import MethodType
class PureProxy(object):
""" Intended usage:
>>> class Foo(object):
... def bar(self, x, y):
... print x, y
...
>>> a = Foo()
>>> b = PureProxy(a, bar=FreezeArgs(y=3))
>>> b.bar(1)
1 3
"""
def __init__(self, underlying, **substitutions):
self.underlying = underlying
for name in substitutions:
subst_attr = substitutions[name]
if isinstance(subst_attr, FreezeArgs):
underlying_func = getattr(underlying, name)
new_method_func = bind(underlying_func, *subst_attr.args, **subst_attr.kwargs)
setattr(self, name, MethodType(new_method_func, self, PureProxy))
def __getattr__(self, name):
return getattr(self.underlying, name)
class FreezeArgs(object):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.args = args
self.kwargs = kwargs
def bind(f, *args, **kwargs):
""" Lets you freeze arguments of a function be certain values. Unlike
functools.partial, you can freeze arguments by name, which has the bonus
of letting you freeze them out of order. args will be treated just like
partial, but kwargs will properly take into account if you are specifying
a regular argument by name. """
argspec = inspect.getargspec(f)
argdict = copy(kwargs)
if hasattr(f, "im_func"):
f = f.im_func
args_idx = 0
for arg in argspec.args:
if args_idx >= len(args):
break
argdict[arg] = args[args_idx]
args_idx += 1
num_plugged = args_idx
def new_func(*inner_args, **inner_kwargs):
args_idx = 0
for arg in argspec.args[num_plugged:]:
if arg in argdict:
continue
if args_idx >= len(inner_args):
break
argdict[arg] = inner_args[args_idx]
args_idx += 1
f(**dict(argdict, **inner_kwargs))
return new_func