partial string formatting

Question

Is it possible to do partial string formatting with the advanced string formatting methods, similar to the string template safe_substitute() function?

F

Answer 1

You could wrap it in a function that takes default arguments:

def print_foo_bar(foo='', bar=''):
    s = '{foo} {bar}'
    return s.format(foo=foo, bar=bar)

print_foo_bar(bar='BAR') # ' BAR'

Answer 2

A very ugly but the simplest solution for me is to just do:

tmpl = '{foo}, {bar}'
tmpl.replace('{bar}', 'BAR')
Out[3]: '{foo}, BAR'

This way you still can use tmpl as regular template and perform partial formatting only when needed. I find this problem too trivial to use a overkilling solution like Mohan Raj's.

Answer 3

This limitation of .format() - the inability to do partial substitutions - has been bugging me.

After evaluating writing a custom Formatter class as described in many answers here and even considering using third-party packages such as lazy_format, I discovered a much simpler inbuilt solution: Template strings

It provides similar functionality but also provides partial substitution thorough safe_substitute() method. The template strings need to have a $ prefix (which feels a bit weird - but the overall solution I think is better).

import string
template = string.Template('${x} ${y}')
try:
  template.substitute({'x':1}) # raises KeyError
except KeyError:
  pass

# but the following raises no error
partial_str = template.safe_substitute({'x':1}) # no error

# partial_str now contains a string with partial substitution
partial_template = string.Template(partial_str)
substituted_str = partial_template.safe_substitute({'y':2}) # no error
print substituted_str # prints '12'

Formed a convenience wrapper based on this:

class StringTemplate(object):
    def __init__(self, template):
        self.template = string.Template(template)
        self.partial_substituted_str = None

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.template.safe_substitute()

    def format(self, *args, **kws):
        self.partial_substituted_str = self.template.safe_substitute(*args, **kws)
        self.template = string.Template(self.partial_substituted_str)
        return self.__repr__()


>>> s = StringTemplate('${x}${y}')
>>> s
'${x}${y}'
>>> s.format(x=1)
'1${y}'
>>> s.format({'y':2})
'12'
>>> print s
12

Similarly a wrapper based on Sven's answer which uses the default string formatting:

class StringTemplate(object):
    class FormatDict(dict):
        def __missing__(self, key):
            return "{" + key + "}"

    def __init__(self, template):
        self.substituted_str = template
        self.formatter = string.Formatter()

    def __repr__(self):
        return self.substituted_str

    def format(self, *args, **kwargs):
        mapping = StringTemplate.FormatDict(*args, **kwargs)
        self.substituted_str = self.formatter.vformat(self.substituted_str, (), mapping)

Answer 4

All the solutions I've found seemed to have issues with more advanced spec or conversion options. @SvenMarnach's FormatPlaceholder is wonderfully clever but it doesn't work properly with coercion (e.g. {a!s:>2s}) because it calls the __str__ method (in this example) instead of __format__ and you lose any additional formatting.

Here's what I ended up with and some of it's key features:

sformat('The {} is {}', 'answer')
'The answer is {}'

sformat('The answer to {question!r} is {answer:0.2f}', answer=42)
'The answer to {question!r} is 42.00'

sformat('The {} to {} is {:0.{p}f}', 'answer', 'everything', p=4)
'The answer to everything is {:0.4f}'

• provides similar interface as str.format (not just a mapping)
• supports more complex formatting options:
  • coercion {k!s} {!r}
  • nesting {k:>{size}}
  • getattr {k.foo}
  • getitem {k[0]}
  • coercion+formatting {k!s:>{size}}

import string


class SparseFormatter(string.Formatter):
    """
    A modified string formatter that handles a sparse set of format
    args/kwargs.
    """

    # re-implemented this method for python2/3 compatibility
    def vformat(self, format_string, args, kwargs):
        used_args = set()
        result, _ = self._vformat(format_string, args, kwargs, used_args, 2)
        self.check_unused_args(used_args, args, kwargs)
        return result

    def _vformat(self, format_string, args, kwargs, used_args, recursion_depth,
                 auto_arg_index=0):
        if recursion_depth < 0:
            raise ValueError('Max string recursion exceeded')
        result = []
        for literal_text, field_name, format_spec, conversion in \
                self.parse(format_string):

            orig_field_name = field_name

            # output the literal text
            if literal_text:
                result.append(literal_text)

            # if there's a field, output it
            if field_name is not None:
                # this is some markup, find the object and do
                #  the formatting

                # handle arg indexing when empty field_names are given.
                if field_name == '':
                    if auto_arg_index is False:
                        raise ValueError('cannot switch from manual field '
                                         'specification to automatic field '
                                         'numbering')
                    field_name = str(auto_arg_index)
                    auto_arg_index += 1
                elif field_name.isdigit():
                    if auto_arg_index:
                        raise ValueError('cannot switch from manual field '
                                         'specification to automatic field '
                                         'numbering')
                    # disable auto arg incrementing, if it gets
                    # used later on, then an exception will be raised
                    auto_arg_index = False

                # given the field_name, find the object it references
                #  and the argument it came from
                try:
                    obj, arg_used = self.get_field(field_name, args, kwargs)
                except (IndexError, KeyError):
                    # catch issues with both arg indexing and kwarg key errors
                    obj = orig_field_name
                    if conversion:
                        obj += '!{}'.format(conversion)
                    if format_spec:
                        format_spec, auto_arg_index = self._vformat(
                            format_spec, args, kwargs, used_args,
                            recursion_depth, auto_arg_index=auto_arg_index)
                        obj += ':{}'.format(format_spec)
                    result.append('{' + obj + '}')
                else:
                    used_args.add(arg_used)

                    # do any conversion on the resulting object
                    obj = self.convert_field(obj, conversion)

                    # expand the format spec, if needed
                    format_spec, auto_arg_index = self._vformat(
                        format_spec, args, kwargs,
                        used_args, recursion_depth-1,
                        auto_arg_index=auto_arg_index)

                    # format the object and append to the result
                    result.append(self.format_field(obj, format_spec))

        return ''.join(result), auto_arg_index


def sformat(s, *args, **kwargs):
    # type: (str, *Any, **Any) -> str
    """
    Sparse format a string.

    Parameters
    ----------
    s : str
    args : *Any
    kwargs : **Any

    Examples
    --------
    >>> sformat('The {} is {}', 'answer')
    'The answer is {}'

    >>> sformat('The answer to {question!r} is {answer:0.2f}', answer=42)
    'The answer to {question!r} is 42.00'

    >>> sformat('The {} to {} is {:0.{p}f}', 'answer', 'everything', p=4)
    'The answer to everything is {:0.4f}'

    Returns
    -------
    str
    """
    return SparseFormatter().format(s, *args, **kwargs)

I discovered the issues with the various implementations after writing some tests on how I wanted this method to behave. They're below if anyone finds them insightful.

import pytest


def test_auto_indexing():
    # test basic arg auto-indexing
    assert sformat('{}{}', 4, 2) == '42'
    assert sformat('{}{} {}', 4, 2) == '42 {}'


def test_manual_indexing():
    # test basic arg indexing
    assert sformat('{0}{1} is not {1} or {0}', 4, 2) == '42 is not 2 or 4'
    assert sformat('{0}{1} is {3} {1} or {0}', 4, 2) == '42 is {3} 2 or 4'


def test_mixing_manualauto_fails():
    # test mixing manual and auto args raises
    with pytest.raises(ValueError):
        assert sformat('{!r} is {0}{1}', 4, 2)


def test_kwargs():
    # test basic kwarg
    assert sformat('{base}{n}', base=4, n=2) == '42'
    assert sformat('{base}{n}', base=4, n=2, extra='foo') == '42'
    assert sformat('{base}{n} {key}', base=4, n=2) == '42 {key}'


def test_args_and_kwargs():
    # test mixing args/kwargs with leftovers
    assert sformat('{}{k} {v}', 4, k=2) == '42 {v}'

    # test mixing with leftovers
    r = sformat('{}{} is the {k} to {!r}', 4, 2, k='answer')
    assert r == '42 is the answer to {!r}'


def test_coercion():
    # test coercion is preserved for skipped elements
    assert sformat('{!r} {k!r}', '42') == "'42' {k!r}"


def test_nesting():
    # test nesting works with or with out parent keys
    assert sformat('{k:>{size}}', k=42, size=3) == ' 42'
    assert sformat('{k:>{size}}', size=3) == '{k:>3}'


@pytest.mark.parametrize(
    ('s', 'expected'),
    [
        ('{a} {b}', '1 2.0'),
        ('{z} {y}', '{z} {y}'),
        ('{a} {a:2d} {a:04d} {y:2d} {z:04d}', '1  1 0001 {y:2d} {z:04d}'),
        ('{a!s} {z!s} {d!r}', '1 {z!s} {\'k\': \'v\'}'),
        ('{a!s:>2s} {z!s:>2s}', ' 1 {z!s:>2s}'),
        ('{a!s:>{a}s} {z!s:>{z}s}', '1 {z!s:>{z}s}'),
        ('{a.imag} {z.y}', '0 {z.y}'),
        ('{e[0]:03d} {z[0]:03d}', '042 {z[0]:03d}'),
    ],
    ids=[
        'normal',
        'none',
        'formatting',
        'coercion',
        'formatting+coercion',
        'nesting',
        'getattr',
        'getitem',
    ]
)
def test_sformat(s, expected):
    # test a bunch of random stuff
    data = dict(
        a=1,
        b=2.0,
        c='3',
        d={'k': 'v'},
        e=[42],
    )
    assert expected == sformat(s, **data)

Answer 5

If you define your own Formatter which overrides the get_value method, you could use that to map undefined field names to whatever you wanted:

http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#string.Formatter.get_value

For instance, you could map bar to "{bar}" if bar isn't in the kwargs.

However, that requires using the format() method of your Formatter object, not the string's format() method.

Answer 6

>>> 'fd:{uid}:{{topic_id}}'.format(uid=123)
'fd:123:{topic_id}'

Try this out.