Question

is there any way to reference a class name from within the class declaration? an example follows:

class Plan(SiloBase):
    cost = DataField(int)
    start = DataField(System.DateTime)
    name = DataField(str)
    items = DataCollection(int)
    subPlan = ReferenceField(Plan)

i’ve got a metaclass that reads this information and does some setup, and the base class implements some common saving stuff. i would love to be able to create recursive definitions like this, but so far in my experimentation i have been unable to get the effect i desire, usually running into a “Plan is not defined” error. I understand what is happening, the name of the class isn’t in scope inside the class.

Answer 1

i’ve got a metaclass that reads this information and does some setup

Most frameworks that use metaclasses provide a way to resolve this. For instance, Django:

subplan = ForeignKey('self')

Google App Engine:

subplan = SelfReferenceProperty()

The problem with solutions like tacking an additional property on later or using __new__ is that most ORM metaclasses expect the class properties to exist at the time when the class is created.