Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By : Sulekha AloorRavi
Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By: Sulekha AloorRavi

Overview of this book

Effective and reusable code makes your application development process seamless and easily maintainable. With Python, you will have access to advanced metaprogramming features that you can use to build high-performing applications. The book starts by introducing you to the need and applications of metaprogramming, before navigating the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. Next, you will learn about simple decorators, work with metaclasses, and later focus on introspection and reflection. You’ll also delve into generics and typing before defining templates for algorithms. As you progress, you will understand your code using abstract syntax trees and explore method resolution order. This Python book also shows you how to create your own dynamic objects before structuring the objects through design patterns. Finally, you will learn simple code-generation techniques along with discovering best practices and eventually building your own applications. By the end of this learning journey, you’ll have acquired the skills and confidence you need to design and build reusable high-performing applications that can solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Fundamentals – Introduction to Object-Oriented Python and Metaprogramming
4
Part 2: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming I
11
Part 3: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming II

Using hasattr to set values

We will now look into the hasattr function, which can be used to check whether a Python object has attributes. Using this function as a condition to test the objects, we can apply reflection on objects externally.

In this example, we will look at creating custom coupons by changing one of its variables using the hasattr function. The classes and methods throughout this chapter are used to understand reflection with relevant examples explained under each section. We will now create another class named CustomCoupon. We will add and define class attributes to this class within the class itself and we will be adding a method to generate coupons:

class CustomCoupon:
    product_name = "Honey Mustard Sauce"
    product_category = "Condiments"
    brand = "ABCBrand3"
    source = "Store"
    expiry_date...