Convert nested Python dict to object?

Question

I\'m searching for an elegant way to get data using attribute access on a dict with some nested dicts and lists (i.e. javascript-style object syntax).

For example:

Answer 1

I think a dict consists of number, string and dict is enough most time. So I ignore the situation that tuples, lists and other types not appearing in the final dimension of a dict.

Considering inheritance, combined with recursion, it solves the print problem conveniently and also provides two ways to query a data,one way to edit a data.

See the example below, a dict that describes some information about students:

group=["class1","class2","class3","class4",]
rank=["rank1","rank2","rank3","rank4","rank5",]
data=["name","sex","height","weight","score"]

#build a dict based on the lists above
student_dic=dict([(g,dict([(r,dict([(d,'') for d in data])) for r in rank ]))for g in group])

#this is the solution
class dic2class(dict):
    def __init__(self, dic):
        for key,val in dic.items():
            self.__dict__[key]=self[key]=dic2class(val) if isinstance(val,dict) else val


student_class=dic2class(student_dic)

#one way to edit:
student_class.class1.rank1['sex']='male'
student_class.class1.rank1['name']='Nan Xiang'

#two ways to query:
print student_class.class1.rank1
print student_class.class1['rank1']
print '-'*50
for rank in student_class.class1:
    print getattr(student_class.class1,rank)

Results:

{'score': '', 'sex': 'male', 'name': 'Nan Xiang', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
{'score': '', 'sex': 'male', 'name': 'Nan Xiang', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
--------------------------------------------------
{'score': '', 'sex': '', 'name': '', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
{'score': '', 'sex': '', 'name': '', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
{'score': '', 'sex': 'male', 'name': 'Nan Xiang', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
{'score': '', 'sex': '', 'name': '', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}
{'score': '', 'sex': '', 'name': '', 'weight': '', 'height': ''}