Question

I need a collection of objects which can be looked up by a certain (unique) attribute common to each of the objects. Right now I am using a dicitionary assigning the dictionary key to the attribute.
Here is an example of what I have now:

class Item():
    def __init__(self, uniq_key, title=None):
        self.key = uniq_key
        self.title = title

item_instance_1 = Item("unique_key1", title="foo")
item_instance_2 = Item("unique_key3", title="foo")
item_instance_3 = Item("unique_key2", title="foo")

item_collection = {
        item_instance_1.key: item_instance_1,
        item_instance_2.key: item_instance_2,
        item_instance_3.key: item_instance_3
        }

item_instance_1.key = "new_key"

Now this seems a rather cumbersome solution, as the key is not a reference to the attribute but takes the value of the key-attribute on assignment, meaning that:

• the keys of the dictionary duplicate information already present in form of the object attribute and
• when the object attribute is changed the dictionary key is not updated.

Using a list and iterating through the object seems even more inefficient.

So, is there more fitting data structure than dict for this particular case, a collection of objects giving me random access based on a certain object attribute?

This would need to work with Python 2.4 as that’s what I am stuck with (at work).

If it hasn’t been obvious, I’m new to Python.

Answer 1

There is actually no duplication of information as you fear: the dict’s key, and the object’s .key attribute, are just two references to exactly the same object.

The only real problem is “what if the .key gets reassigned”. Well then, clearly you must use a property that updates all the relevant dicts as well as the instance’s attribute; so each object must know all the dicts in which it may be enregistered. Ideally one would want to use weak references for the purpose, to avoid circular dependencies, but, alas, you can’t take a weakref.ref (or proxy) to a dict. So, I’m using normal references here, instead (the alternative is not to use dict instances but e.g. some special subclass — not handy).

def enregister(d, obj):
  obj.ds.append(d)
  d[obj.key] = obj

class Item(object):
    def __init__(self, uniq_key, title=None):
        self._key = uniq_key
        self.title = title
        self.ds = []

    def adjust_key(self, newkey):
        newds = [d for d in self.ds if self._key in d]
        for d in newds:
          del d[self._key]
          d[newkey] = self
        self.ds = newds
        self._key = newkey

    def get_key(self):
        return self._key

    key = property(get_key, adjust_key)

Edit: if you want a single collection with ALL the instances of Item, that’s even easier, as you can make the collection a class-level attribute; indeed it can be a WeakValueDictionary to avoid erroneously keeping items alive, if that’s what you need. I.e.:

class Item(object):

    all = weakref.WeakValueDictionary()

    def __init__(self, uniq_key, title=None):
        self._key = uniq_key
        self.title = title
        # here, if needed, you could check that the key
        # is not ALREADY present in self.all
        self.all[self._key] = self

    def adjust_key(self, newkey):
        # "key non-uniqueness" could be checked here too
        del self.all[self._key]
        self.all[newkey] = self
        self._key = newkey

    def get_key(self):
        return self._key

    key = property(get_key, adjust_key)

Now you can use Item.all['akey'], Item.all.get('akey'), for akey in Item.all:, and so forth — all the rich functionality of dicts.