How to “perfectly” override a dict?

Question

How can I make as \"perfect\" a subclass of dict as possible? The end goal is to have a simple dict in which the keys are lowercase.

It would seem

Answer 1

After trying out both of the top two suggestions, I've settled on a shady-looking middle route for Python 2.7. Maybe 3 is saner, but for me:

class MyDict(MutableMapping):
   # ... the few __methods__ that mutablemapping requires
   # and then this monstrosity
   @property
   def __class__(self):
       return dict

which I really hate, but seems to fit my needs, which are:

• can override **my_dict
  • if you inherit from dict, this bypasses your code. try it out.
  • this makes #2 unacceptable for me at all times, as this is quite common in python code
• masquerades as isinstance(my_dict, dict)
  • rules out MutableMapping alone, so #1 is not enough
  • I heartily recommend #1 if you don't need this, it's simple and predictable
• fully controllable behavior
  • so I cannot inherit from dict

If you need to tell yourself apart from others, personally I use something like this (though I'd recommend better names):

def __am_i_me(self):
  return True

@classmethod
def __is_it_me(cls, other):
  try:
    return other.__am_i_me()
  except Exception:
    return False

As long as you only need to recognize yourself internally, this way it's harder to accidentally call __am_i_me due to python's name-munging (this is renamed to _MyDict__am_i_me from anything calling outside this class). Slightly more private than _methods, both in practice and culturally.

So far I have no complaints, aside from the seriously-shady-looking __class__ override. I'd be thrilled to hear of any problems that others encounter with this though, I don't fully understand the consequences. But so far I've had no problems whatsoever, and this allowed me to migrate a lot of middling-quality code in lots of locations without needing any changes.

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As evidence: https://repl.it/repls/TraumaticToughCockatoo

Basically: copy the current #2 option, add print 'method_name' lines to every method, and then try this and watch the output:

d = LowerDict()  # prints "init", or whatever your print statement said
print '------'
splatted = dict(**d)  # note that there are no prints here

You'll see similar behavior for other scenarios. Say your fake-dict is a wrapper around some other datatype, so there's no reasonable way to store the data in the backing-dict; **your_dict will be empty, regardless of what every other method does.

This works correctly for MutableMapping, but as soon as you inherit from dict it becomes uncontrollable.

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Edit: as an update, this has been running without a single issue for almost two years now, on several hundred thousand (eh, might be a couple million) lines of complicated, legacy-ridden python. So I'm pretty happy with it :)

Edit 2: apparently I mis-copied this or something long ago. @classmethod __class__ does not work for isinstance checks - @property __class__ does: https://repl.it/repls/UnitedScientificSequence