Manuel Bleichner wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> I have searched for some time now, but no result...
> I'm having the following problem:
>
> In a module I have a huge number of classes of the form:
>
> class A(object):
> connected_to = [B, C]
> <other attributes...>
>
> class B(object)
> connected_to = [C]
> <other attributes...>
>
> class C(object)
> connected_to = [A]
> <other attributes...>
>
> As you see, classes A and B reference classes that
> are not yet defined when the class is being defined.
> It will raise a NameError: 'B'.
>
> I know i could solve this by leaving out the definition
> of 'connected_to' in A and attach it to the class later on by
> A.connected_to = [B, C]
> but I would like to avoid this, because in the module
> there are about 50 classes that have to be altered from time
> to time and it's just incredibly ugly if I have to look for
> the attribute definitions in more than one place.
So why can't you do it all in one place by
A.connected_to = [B, C]
B.connected_to = [C]
C.connected_to = [A]
?
or by a tabular method:
connections = (
(A, [B, C]),
(B, [C]),
(C, [A]),
)
for cls_from, targets in connections:
# maybe insert some checking code in here ...
# is X.connected_to = [X] allowed?
# is Y.connected_to = [] allowed?
cls_from.connected_to = targets
>
> Also, I would like to avoid eval(), because the references
> have to be followed very often and that would cause more
> CPU load and make the program code uglier :)
Avoiding eval() does always seem to be a good thing :-)
BTW, care to tell us what the connections mean? Applications of
connected instances of the one class are of course very common, but 50
classes connected in a cyclic fashion is rather new to me ...
Cheers,
John
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