Question

Suppose code like this:

class Base:
    def start(self):
        pass
    def stop(self)
        pass

class A(Base):
    def start(self):
        ... do something for A
    def stop(self)
        .... do something for A

class B(Base):
    def start(self):

    def stop(self):

a1 = A(); a2 = A()
b1 = B(); b2 = B()

all = [a1, b1, b2, a2,.....]

Now I want to call methods start and stop (maybe also others) for each object in the list all. Is there any elegant way for doing this except of writing a bunch of functions like

def start_all(all):
    for item in all:
        item.start()

def stop_all(all):

Answer 1

The *_all() functions are so simple that for a few methods I’d just write the functions. If you have lots of identical functions, you can write a generic function:

def apply_on_all(seq, method, *args, **kwargs):
    for obj in seq:
         getattr(obj, method)(*args, **kwargs)

Or create a function factory:

def create_all_applier(method, doc=None):
    def on_all(seq, *args, **kwargs):
        for obj in seq:
            getattr(obj, method)(*args, **kwargs)
    on_all.__doc__ = doc
    return on_all

start_all = create_all_applier('start', "Start all instances")
stop_all = create_all_applier('stop', "Stop all instances")
...