How about an implementation where objects aren't kept alive just because they're observing something? Below please find an implementation of the observer pattern with the following features:
- Usage is pythonic. To add an observer to a bound method
.bar of instance foo, just do foo.bar.addObserver(observer).
- Observers are not kept alive by virtue of being observers. In other words, the observer code uses no strong references.
- No sub-classing necessary (descriptors ftw).
- Can be used with unhashable types.
- Can be used as many times you want in a single class.
- (bonus) As of today the code exists in a proper downloadable, installable package on github.
Here's the code (the github package or PyPI package have the most up to date implementation):
import weakref
import functools
class ObservableMethod(object):
"""
A proxy for a bound method which can be observed.
I behave like a bound method, but other bound methods can subscribe to be
called whenever I am called.
"""
def __init__(self, obj, func):
self.func = func
functools.update_wrapper(self, func)
self.objectWeakRef = weakref.ref(obj)
self.callbacks = {} #observing object ID -> weak ref, methodNames
def addObserver(self, boundMethod):
"""
Register a bound method to observe this ObservableMethod.
The observing method will be called whenever this ObservableMethod is
called, and with the same arguments and keyword arguments. If a
boundMethod has already been registered to as a callback, trying to add
it again does nothing. In other words, there is no way to sign up an
observer to be called back multiple times.
"""
obj = boundMethod.__self__
ID = id(obj)
if ID in self.callbacks:
s = self.callbacks[ID][1]
else:
wr = weakref.ref(obj, Cleanup(ID, self.callbacks))
s = set()
self.callbacks[ID] = (wr, s)
s.add(boundMethod.__name__)
def discardObserver(self, boundMethod):
"""
Un-register a bound method.
"""
obj = boundMethod.__self__
if id(obj) in self.callbacks:
self.callbacks[id(obj)][1].discard(boundMethod.__name__)
def __call__(self, *arg, **kw):
"""
Invoke the method which I proxy, and all of it's callbacks.
The callbacks are called with the same *args and **kw as the main
method.
"""
result = self.func(self.objectWeakRef(), *arg, **kw)
for ID in self.callbacks:
wr, methodNames = self.callbacks[ID]
obj = wr()
for methodName in methodNames:
getattr(obj, methodName)(*arg, **kw)
return result
@property
def __self__(self):
"""
Get a strong reference to the object owning this ObservableMethod
This is needed so that ObservableMethod instances can observe other
ObservableMethod instances.
"""
return self.objectWeakRef()
class ObservableMethodDescriptor(object):
def __init__(self, func):
"""
To each instance of the class using this descriptor, I associate an
ObservableMethod.
"""
self.instances = {} # Instance id -> (weak ref, Observablemethod)
self._func = func
def __get__(self, inst, cls):
if inst is None:
return self
ID = id(inst)
if ID in self.instances:
wr, om = self.instances[ID]
if not wr():
msg = "Object id %d should have been cleaned up"%(ID,)
raise RuntimeError(msg)
else:
wr = weakref.ref(inst, Cleanup(ID, self.instances))
om = ObservableMethod(inst, self._func)
self.instances[ID] = (wr, om)
return om
def __set__(self, inst, val):
raise RuntimeError("Assigning to ObservableMethod not supported")
def event(func):
return ObservableMethodDescriptor(func)
class Cleanup(object):
"""
I manage remove elements from a dict whenever I'm called.
Use me as a weakref.ref callback to remove an object's id from a dict
when that object is garbage collected.
"""
def __init__(self, key, d):
self.key = key
self.d = d
def __call__(self, wr):
del self.d[self.key]
To use this we just decorate methods we want to make observable with @event. Here's an example
class Foo(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
@event
def bar(self):
print("%s called bar"%(self.name,))
def baz(self):
print("%s called baz"%(self.name,))
a = Foo('a')
b = Foo('b')
a.bar.addObserver(b.bar)
a.bar()
