Question

How can I go about installing as a class variable a table that contains the entry points to the methods?

For clarification, consider the following -working- code:

class A(object):

    def go(self, n):
        method = self.table[n]
        method(self)

    def add(self):
        print "add"

    def multiply(self):
        print "multiply"

    table = {
        1: add,
        2: multiply,
        }

>>> q = A()
>>> q.go(1)
add

However, I don’t like it much. I would like to have the table at the beginning for readability (the real world project is much bigger) and I don’t like the call using method(self). I think it’s very confusing.

My question is: Is there a better way or is the above code spot-on?

Thank you.

Answer 1

It already contains one. It’s called __dict__.

class foo(object):
    def go(self, method):
        getattr(self, method)()

    def a(self):
        ...

    def b(self):
        ...

If you reaaaally want numeric indices, you can do e.g.

class foo(object):
    methods = { 1: 'a', 2: 'b' }
    def go(self, n):
        getattr(self, self.methods[n])()

But that’s just silly, especially that strings are interned and using magic integers in place of them doesn’t buy you much, except for obscurity.