The Immutable Package
This package is an exceedingly simple wrapper around the builtin
namedtuple
from the collections
package.
It allows you to instantiate via a tuple
or via kwargs
. It
simplifies the case where you know ahead of time what the values of an
Immutable
should be and you just need to instantiate it once.
Install
pip install immutable
Details
namedtuple
The ``namedtuple`` is a Python ``builtin`` that allows you to
instantiate an object as follows:
.. code:: python
from collections import namedtuple
TupleFactory = namedtuple('ATuple', ['using', 'these', 'attrs'])
ATuple = TupleFactory('first', these='second', attrs='third')
ATuple # ATuple(using='first', these='second', attrs='third')
# dot-access attributes
ATuple.using # 'first'
Atuple.these # 'second'
ATuple.attrs # 'third'
# index-access attributes
ATuple[0] # 'first'
ATuple[1] # 'second'
ATuple[2] # 'third'
ATuple[-1] # 'third'
# the class name is as specified in creating the original factory
ATuple.__class__.__name__ # 'ATuple'
``ImmutableFactory``
Replicate namedtuple
functionality
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The ImmutableFactory is just a thin wrapper that allows you to do this
in one step:
.. code:: python
from immutable import ImmutableFactory
attributes = (('using', 'first'), ('these', 'second'), ('attrs', 'third'))
# don't worry about the extra kwargs for now :)
ATuple = ImmutableFactory.create(attributes, keys=False, values=False, items=False)
ATuple # Immutable(using='first', these='second', attrs='third')
# dot-access attributes
ATuple.using # 'first'
Atuple.these # 'second'
ATuple.attrs # 'third'
# index-access attributes
ATuple[0] # 'first'
ATuple[1] # 'second'
ATuple[2] # 'third'
ATuple[-1] # 'third'
# the class name is *always* `Immutable` now
ATuple.__class__.__name__ # 'Immutable'
Some extra bells and whistles (don't get too excited)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Most of the time, we don't care about the order. This allows us to
instantiate in a much cleaner style:
.. code:: python
from immutable import ImmutableFactory
ATuple = ImmutableFactory.create(using='first', these='second', attrs='third',
keys=False, values=False, items=False)
# note that there's no predictable order here
ATuple # Immutable(these='second', using='first', attrs='third')
# dot-access attributes
ATuple.using # 'first'
Atuple.these # 'second'
ATuple.attrs # 'third'
# doesn't really make sense to index-access attributes now, so don't.
# the class name is *always* `Immutable` now
ATuple.__class__.__name__ # 'Immutable'
Additionally, it's helpful to have dict-like keys
, values
, and
items
. These
Notes
Note if you use a *mutable* as a value for an attribute of an
``Immutable`` object, you'll be able to change it. If this wasn't the
case, the ``ImmutableFactory`` would need to mutate your input data--not
nice.
.. code:: python
from immutable import ImmutableFactory
ATuple = ImmutableFactory.create(mutable=['a', 'list'])
ATuple.mutable # ['a', 'list']
ATuple.mutable.append('can change!')
ATuple.mutable # ['a', 'list', 'can change!']