Python - Access object attributes as in a dictionary

Question

>>> my_object.name = 'stuff'
>>> my_str = 'name'
>>> my_object[my_str] # won't work because it's not a dictionary :)

How can I access to the fields of my_object defined on my_str ?

Answer 1

getattr(my_object, my_str)

Or, if you're not sure if the name exists as a key and want to provide a fallback instead of throwing an exception:

getattr(my_object, my_str, "Could not find anything")

More on getattr.

Answer 2

You can provide support for the [] operator for objects of your class by defining a small family of methods - getitem and setitem , principally. See the next few entries in the docs for some others to implement, for full support.

Answer 3

>>> myobject.__dict__[my_str]
'stuff'

Answer 4

You can't do the __dict__ -approach in general. What will always work is

getattr(myobject, my_str)

If you want dict-like access, just define a class with an overloaded index-operator.