Question

  <specification> 
    <propertyName> string </propertyName>
    <value> 
      <number> 
        <value> anyNumberHere </value>
      </number>
      <text> 
        <value> anyTextHere </value>
      </text>
      <URL> 
        <value> anyURIHere </value>
      </URL>
    </value>
    <!-- ... 1 or more value nodes here ... -->
  </specification>
  <!-- ... 1 or more specification nodes here ... -->

I need to construct this request for an API, where user will pass these values. So, what should be the best way to represent this, so that it is easy for the user of the method to pass the respective values to the operation?

I am thinking:

List of List of Dicts:

[specification1, specification2, specification3]

Where:

specification1= [value1, value2]

Where:

value1 = {number:anyNumberHere, text:anyTextHere, URL:anyURIHere}
value2 = {number:anyNumberHere, text:anyTextHere, URL:anyURIHere}

But, I am not able to accommodate: <propertyName> here. Any suggestions?

More over, it sounds way to complicated. Can we have object encapsulation like we do it in Java? I understand, we can, but I am curious, what is the recommended way in python?

My logic for now, suggestions (incorrect due to propertyName):
    #specification is a List of List of Dicts
    for spec in specification:
        specification_elem = etree.SubElement(root, "specification")
        propertyName_elem = etree.SubElement(specification_elem,"propertyName")
        propertyName_elem.text = spec_propertyName

        for value in spec:
            value_elem = etree.SubElement(specification_elem, "value")
            for key in value:
                key_elem = etree.SubElement(value_elem, key)
                keyValue_elem = etree.SubElement(key_elem, "value")
                keyValue_elem.text = value[key]

Here, I will pass spec_propertyName, as a diff parameter. So, user will pass: specification and spec_propertyName

Answer 1

How about a list of Specification objects, of which each has a property_name and a list of value dictionaries? (values could be a list of objects instead of dictionaries.)

For example:

class Value(object):
    def __init__(self,
                 number=None,
                 text=None,
                 url=None):
        self.number = number
        self.text = text
        self.url = url

class Specification(object):
    def __init__(self, propertyName):
        self.propertyName = propertyName
        self.values = []

spec1 = Specification("Spec1")
spec1.values = [Value(number=3,
                      url="http://www.google.com"),
                Value(text="Hello, World!",
                      url="http://www.jasonfruit.com")]

spec2 = Specification("Spec2")
spec2.values = [Value(number=27,
                      text="I can haz cheezburger?",
                      url="http://stackoverflow.com"),
                Value(text="Running out of ideas.",
                      url="http://news.google.com")]