I have a class that inflates objects from rows found in a database (or another source, e.g. MongoDB, a CSV file, etc.). To set the object’s properties, it does something like self.__dict__.update(**properties) or obj.__dict__.update(**properties).
Is this considered Pythonic? Is this a good pattern that I should continue to use, or is this considered bad form?
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In Python 3.3, a new type was added, types.SimpleNamespace(), and in the documentation it is described thus:
The type is roughly equivalent to the following code:
class SimpleNamespace: def __init__(self, **kwargs): self.__dict__.update(kwargs) def __repr__(self): keys = sorted(self.__dict__) items = ("{}={!r}".format(k, self.__dict__[k]) for k in keys) return "{}({})".format(type(self).__name__, ", ".join(items))
Note the __init__ method of the type; you cannot get a better endorsement of the technique than the Python documentation.
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