expanding dictionary to function arguments

[Noah]

I have a dictionary that I would like to expand to satisfy a
function's agument list. I can used the ** syntax to pass a dictionary,
but
this only works if each key in the dictionary matches an argument.
I cannot pass a dictionary that has more keys than the function has
arguments.

# Example 1 - This works:
# Prints "hello world!"
def foo (arg1='greetings', arg2='planet', arg3='.'):
print arg1 + ' ' + arg2 + arg3
args = {'arg1':'hello', 'arg2':'world', 'arg3':'!'}
foo (**args)

# Example 2 - This does not work:
# raises TypeError: foo() got an unexpected keyword argument 'arg4')
def foo (arg1='greetings', arg2='planet', arg3='.'):
print arg1 + ' ' + arg2 + arg3
args = {'arg1':'hello', 'arg2':'world', 'arg3':'!', 'arg4':'ignore'}
foo (**args)

As a practical application, I have a project where I have a config file

that defines a large number of keys and values. I read the config
file into a dictionary called "options". I also have an API module with
many
functions that I want to call with arguments taken directly from the
"options" dictionary. The key names in the "options" dictionary match
the argument names of the functions in my API.

# The ugly, brutish way:
options = read_config ("options.conf")
extract_audio (options['source_video_filename'])
compress_audio (options['audio_raw_filename'],
options['audio_compressed_filename'], options['audio_sample_rate'],
options['audio_bitrate'])
mux (options['source_video_filename'],
options['audio_compressed_filename'], options['output_video_filename'])

I know that the keys in my "options" dictionary match the arguments
of the functions in the API library, so I would like to do this:
options = read_config ("options.conf")
extract_audio (**options)
compress_audio (**options)
mux (**options)

I created the following function to do what I am describing.
This isn't too bad, but I thought that perhaps there was some
secret Python syntax that will do this for me.

def apply_smart (func, args):
"""This is similar to func(**args), but this won't complain about
extra keys in 'args'. This ignores keys in 'args' that are
not required by 'func'. This passes None to arguments that are
not defined in 'args'. That's fine for arguments with a default
valeue, but
that's a bug for required arguments. I should probably raise a
TypeError.
"""
if hasattr(func,'im_func'): # Handle case when func is a class
method.
func = func.im_func
argcount = func.func_code.co_argcount
required_args = dict([(k,args.get(k)) for k in
func.func_code.co_varnames[:argcount]])
return func(**required_args)

So, I now I can do this:
options = read_config ("options.conf")
apply_smart (extract_audio, options)
apply_smart (compress_audio, options)
apply_smart (mux, options)

Neat, but is that the best I can do?

Yours,
Noah

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Noah a écrit :

I have a dictionary that I would like to expand to satisfy a
function's agument list. I can used the ** syntax to pass a dictionary,
but
this only works if each key in the dictionary matches an argument.
I cannot pass a dictionary that has more keys than the function has
arguments.

If you have control over the API functions declarations, makes them so:

def my_api_func(arg1='', arg2='whatever', **kwargs):
code_here

[Noah]

Bruno Desthuilliers a écrit :

Noah a écrit :
If you have control over the API functions declarations, makes them so:
def my_api_func(arg1='', arg2='whatever', **kwargs):
code_here

Unfortunately I cannot change the API functions.
I should have mentioned that.

Yours,
Noah

[bruno at modulix]

Noah wrote:

Bruno Desthuilliers a écrit :

Noah a écrit :
If you have control over the API functions declarations, makes them so:
def my_api_func(arg1='', arg2='whatever', **kwargs):
code_here

Unfortunately I cannot change the API functions.
I should have mentioned that.

Yeps... That what I thought, but you didn't mention it, and it was not
that clear (or it's me being stupid...).

I'm no great expert, but apart from writing a generic decorator for the
API objects and decorating them all with your smart_apply function -
which won't by you much in this case imho -, I don't see a much better
solution...

Some guru around ???

--
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'o****@xiludom.gro'.split('@')])"

[Bengt Richter]

On 1 Nov 2005 17:17:00 -0800, "Noah" <no**@noah.org> wrote:

I have a dictionary that I would like to expand to satisfy a
function's agument list. I can used the ** syntax to pass a dictionary,
but
this only works if each key in the dictionary matches an argument.
I cannot pass a dictionary that has more keys than the function has
arguments. [...]I created the following function to do what I am describing.
This isn't too bad, but I thought that perhaps there was some
secret Python syntax that will do this for me.

def apply_smart (func, args):
"""This is similar to func(**args), but this won't complain about
extra keys in 'args'. This ignores keys in 'args' that are
not required by 'func'. This passes None to arguments that are
not defined in 'args'. That's fine for arguments with a default
valeue, but
that's a bug for required arguments. I should probably raise a
TypeError.
""" Ok, so why not do it? ;-) if hasattr(func,'im_func'): # Handle case when func is a class
method.
func = func.im_func skipself = True
else: skipself = False argcount = func.func_code.co_argcount Make arg list and call with it instead of required_args = dict([(k,args.get(k)) for k in
func.func_code.co_varnames[:argcount]])
return func(**required_args) try:
required_args = [args[k] for k in func.func_code.co_varnames[skipself:argcount]]
except KeyError:
raise TypeError, '%s(...) missing arg %r'%(func.func_name, k)
return func(*required_args)

So, I now I can do this:
options = read_config ("options.conf")
apply_smart (extract_audio, options)
apply_smart (compress_audio, options)
apply_smart (mux, options)

Neat, but is that the best I can do?

I suppose you could replace your local bindings of extract_audio, compress_audio, and mux
with wrapper functions of the same name that could cache the func and arg names in closure
variables, e.g., using a decorator function (virtually untested)

def call_with_args_from_dict(func):
argnames = func.func_code.co_varnames[hasattr(func, 'im_func'):func.func_code.co_argcount]
ndefaults = len(func.func_defaults or ())
if ndefaults:
defnames = argnames[-ndefaults:]
argnames = argnames[:-ndefaults]
else:
defnames = []
def _f(**args):
try:
actualargs = [args[argname] for argname in argnames]
for argname in defnames:
if argname not in args: break
actualargs.append(args[argname])
except KeyError: raise TypeError, '%s(...) missing arg(s) %r'%(
func.func_name, [argname for argname in argnames if argname not in args])
return func(*actualargs)
_f.func_name = func.func_name
return _f
and then wrap like

extract_audio = call_with_args_from_dict(extract_audio)

or use as a decorator if you are defining the function to be wrapped, e.g.,

@call_with_args_from_dict
def mux(firstarg, second, etc):
...

Regards,
Bengt Richter