I want to override access to one variable in a class, but return all others normally. How do I accomplish this with __getattribute__
?
I tried the following (which should also illustrate what I'm trying to do) but I get a recursion error:
class D(object):
def __init__(self):
self.test=20
self.test2=21
def __getattribute__(self,name):
if name=='test':
return 0.
else:
return self.__dict__[name]
>>> print D().test
0.0
>>> print D().test2
...
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded in cmp
You get a recursion error because your attempt to access the self.__dict__
attribute inside __getattribute__
invokes your __getattribute__
again. If you use object
's __getattribute__
instead, it works:
class D(object):
def __init__(self):
self.test=20
self.test2=21
def __getattribute__(self,name):
if name=='test':
return 0.
else:
return object.__getattribute__(self, name)
This works because object
(in this example) is the base class. By calling the base version of __getattribute__
you avoid the recursive hell you were in before.
Ipython output with code in foo.py:
In [1]: from foo import *
In [2]: d = D()
In [3]: d.test
Out[3]: 0.0
In [4]: d.test2
Out[4]: 21
Update:
There's something in the section titled More attribute access for new-style classes in the current documentation, where they recommend doing exactly this to avoid the infinite recursion.