question about overriding method

[Allan Streib]

Here is what I need to do: The bsddb3 module
(http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/) defines a class called _DBWithCursor
which has a method called set_location. The code for set_location
looks like:

def set_location(self, key):
self._checkOpen()
self._checkCursor()
return self.dbc.set(key)

I want to in effect override that method so that in the last line it
calls set_range(key) instead of set(key).

But, I never deal with that class directly; an instance of it is
returned by the function "btopen" which is defined in the __init__.py
file of the bsddb3 module. btopen is not a class method; it is just a
function defined in the bsddb3 namespace.

So when I write:

import bsddb3
mydb = bsddb3.btopen("mydbfile", "r")

how do I get mydb.set_location() to behave as I want? I'm assuming
that there's a way to override this in my program; I don't really want
to change the bsddb3 __init__.py code.

My solution is:

import bsddb3

def my_set_location(self, key):
self._checkOpen()
self._checkCursor()
return self.dbc.set_range(key)

bsddb3._DBWithCursor.__dict__['set_location']=my_set_location
Which seems to do what I want. Is there a better approach?

Allan