Intercept operator lookup on metaclass

Question

I have a class that need to make some magic with every operator, like __add__, __sub__ and so on.

Instead of creating each function in the

Answer 1

Some black magic let's you achieve your goal:

operators = ["add", "mul"]

class OperatorHackiness(object):
  """
  Use this base class if you want your object
  to intercept __add__, __iadd__, __radd__, __mul__ etc.
  using __getattr__.
  __getattr__ will called at most _once_ during the
  lifetime of the object, as the result is cached!
  """

  def __init__(self):
    # create a instance-local base class which we can
    # manipulate to our needs
    self.__class__ = self.meta = type('tmp', (self.__class__,), {})


# add operator methods dynamically, because we are damn lazy.
# This loop is however only called once in the whole program
# (when the module is loaded)
def create_operator(name):
  def dynamic_operator(self, *args):
    # call getattr to allow interception
    # by user
    func = self.__getattr__(name)
    # save the result in the temporary
    # base class to avoid calling getattr twice
    setattr(self.meta, name, func)
    # use provided function to calculate result
    return func(self, *args)
  return dynamic_operator

for op in operators:
  for name in ["__%s__" % op, "__r%s__" % op, "__i%s__" % op]:
    setattr(OperatorHackiness, name, create_operator(name))


# Example user class
class Test(OperatorHackiness):
  def __init__(self, x):
    super(Test, self).__init__()
    self.x = x

  def __getattr__(self, attr):
    print "__getattr__(%s)" % attr
    if attr == "__add__":
      return lambda a, b: a.x + b.x
    elif attr == "__iadd__":
      def iadd(self, other):
        self.x += other.x
        return self
      return iadd
    elif attr == "__mul__":
      return lambda a, b: a.x * b.x
    else:
      raise AttributeError

## Some test code:

a = Test(3)
b = Test(4)

# let's test addition
print(a + b) # this first call to __add__ will trigger
            # a __getattr__ call
print(a + b) # this second call will not!

# same for multiplication
print(a * b)
print(a * b)

# inplace addition (getattr is also only called once)
a += b
a += b
print(a.x) # yay!

Output

__getattr__(__add__)
7
7
__getattr__(__mul__)
12
12
__getattr__(__iadd__)
11

Now you can use your second code sample literally by inheriting from my OperatorHackiness base class. You even get an additional benefit: __getattr__ will only be called once per instance and operator and there is no additional layer of recursion involved for the caching. We hereby circumvent the problem of method calls being slow compared to method lookup (as Paul Hankin noticed correctly).

NOTE: The loop to add the operator methods is only executed once in your whole program, so the preparation takes constant overhead in the range of milliseconds.