Python's hasattr on list values of dictionaries always returns false?

Question

I have a dictionary that sometimes receives calls for non-existent keys, so I try and use hasattr and getattr to handle these cases:

key_string = 'foo'
print "current info:", info
print hasattr(info, key_string)
print getattr(info, key_string, [])
if hasattr(info, key_string):
    array = getattr(info, key_string, [])
array.append(integer)
info[key_string] = array
print "current info:", info

The first time this runs with integer = 1:

current info: {}
False
[]
current info: {'foo': [1]}

Running this code again with integer = 2:

instance.add_to_info("foo", 2)

current info: {'foo': [1]}
False
[]
current info: {'foo': [2]}

The first run is clearly successful ({'foo': [1]}), but hasattr returns false and getattr uses the default blank array the second time around, losing the value of 1 in the process! Why is this?

Answer 1

hasattr does not test for members of a dictionary. Use the in operator instead, or the .has_key method:

>>> example = dict(foo='bar')
>>> 'foo' in example
True
>>> example.has_key('foo')
True
>>> 'baz' in example
False

But note that dict.has_key() has been deprecated, is recommended against by the PEP 8 style guide and has been removed altogether in Python 3.

Incidentally, you'll run into problems by using a mutable class variable:

>>> class example(object):
...     foo = dict()
...
>>> A = example()
>>> B = example()
>>> A.foo['bar'] = 'baz'
>>> B.foo
{'bar': 'baz'}

Initialize it in your __init__ instead:

class State(object):
    info = None

    def __init__(self):
        self.info = {}