Python - detect when my object is written to stdout?

Question

I have a rather unusual request, I think... I\'ll explain the why after I explain the what.

What

I want to detect whenever my object is written

Answer 1

Intriguing problem! My first guess is that sys.stdout.write doesn't call the __str__ method because your object already is a str (or at least a subclass of it, which is good enough for all intents and purposes)... so no casting methods are needed.

Further investigation suggests that sys.stdout.write really doesn't ever want to call the __str__ method ...

Subclass approach

With a little introspection, you can find out which methods of your str subclass are called by sys.stdout.write (the answer is, not many):

class superstring(str):
    def __getattribute__(self, name):
        print "*** lookup attribute %s of %s" % (name, repr(self))
        return str.__getattribute__(self, name)

foo = superstring("UberL33tPrompt> ")
sys.stdout.write(foo)

Running in a Unicode environment (Python 2.7, iPython notebook), this prints:

*** lookup attribute __class__ of 'UberL33tPrompt> '
*** lookup attribute decode of 'UberL33tPrompt> '
UberL33tPrompt> 

It seems rather kludge-y, but you could override the subclass's decode method to perform the desired side effects.

However, in a non-Unicode environment there are no attribute lookups.

Wrapper approach

Rather than using a subclass of str, maybe what you need is some kind of "wrapper" around str. Here's an ugly exploratory hack which creates a class that delegates most of its attributes to str, but which is not strictly a subclass thereof:

class definitely_not_a_string(object):
    def __init__(self, s):
        self.s = s
    def __str__(self):
        print "*** Someone wants to see my underlying string object!"
        return self.s
    def decode(self, encoding, whatever):
        print "*** Someone wants to decode me!"
        return self.s.decode(encoding, whatever)
    def __getattribute__(self, name):
        print "*** lookup attribute %s of %s" % (name, repr(self))
        if name in ('s', '__init__', '__str__', 'decode', '__class__'):
            return object.__getattribute__(self, name)
        else:
            return str.__getattribute__(self, name)

foo = definitely_not_a_string("UberL33tPrompt> ")
sys.stdout.write(foo)

In the Unicode environment, this gives basically the same results:

*** lookup attribute __class__ of <__main__.definitely_not_a_string object at 0x00000000072D79B0>
*** lookup attribute decode of <__main__.definitely_not_a_string object at 0x00000000072D79B0>
*** Someone wants to decode me!
*** lookup attribute s of <__main__.definitely_not_a_string object at 0x00000000072D79B0>
UberL33tPrompt> 

However, when I run in a non-Unicode environment, definitely_not_a_string gives an error message:

TypeError: expected a character buffer object

... this shows that the .write method is going straight to the C-level buffer interface when it doesn't need to do any Unicode decoding.

My conclusion

It seems that overriding the decode method is a possible kludge in Unicode environments, since sys.stdout.write calls this method when it needs to decode a str into Unicode.

However, in non-Unicode environments it appears that .write doesn't do any attribute lookups whatsoever, but simply goes straight to the C-level character buffer protocol, so there's no way to intercept its access from Python code. Indeed, help(sys.stdout.write) verifies that it's a built-in function (aka written in C, not Python).