Set attributes from dictionary in python

Question

Is it possible to create an object from a dictionary in python in such a way that each key is an attribute of that object?

Something like this:

 d =          


        

Answer 1

Setting attributes in this way is almost certainly not the best way to solve a problem. Either:

1. You know what all the fields should be ahead of time. In that case, you can set all the attributes explicitly. This would look like

   class Employee(object):
       def __init__(self, name, last_name, age):
           self.name = name
           self.last_name = last_name
           self.age = age
   
   d = {'name': 'Oscar', 'last_name': 'Reyes', 'age':32 }
   e = Employee(**d) 
   
   print e.name # Oscar 
   print e.age + 10 # 42 
   

   or

2. You don't know what all the fields should be ahead of time. In this case, you should store the data as a dict instead of polluting an objects namespace. Attributes are for static access. This case would look like

   class Employee(object):
       def __init__(self, data):
           self.data = data
   
   d = {'name': 'Oscar', 'last_name': 'Reyes', 'age':32 }
   e = Employee(d) 
   
   print e.data['name'] # Oscar 
   print e.data['age'] + 10 # 42 
   

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Another solution that is basically equivalent to case 1 is to use a collections.namedtuple. See van's answer for how to implement that.