import sys thismodule = sys.modules[__name__] setattr(thismodule, name, value) or, without using setattr (which breaks the letter of the question but satisfies the same practical purposes;-): globals()[name] = value Note: at module scope, the latter is equivalent to: vars()[name] = value which is a bit more concise, but doesn’t work from within a function (vars() gives … Read more
Overriding __getattr__ should be fine — __getattr__ is only called as a last resort i.e. if there are no attributes in the instance that match the name. For instance, if you access foo.bar, then __getattr__ will only be called if foo has no attribute called bar. If the attribute is one you don’t want to … Read more
Some basics first. With objects, you need to deal with their attributes. Ordinarily, we do instance.attribute. Sometimes we need more control (when we do not know the name of the attribute in advance). For example, instance.attribute would become getattr(instance, attribute_name). Using this model, we can get the attribute by supplying the attribute_name as a string. … Read more
Objects in Python can have attributes — data attributes and functions to work with those (methods). Actually, every object has built-in attributes (try dir(None), dir(True), dir(…), dir(dir) in Python console). For example you have an object person, that has several attributes: name, gender, etc. You access these attributes (be it methods or data objects) usually … Read more
A key difference between __getattr__ and __getattribute__ is that __getattr__ is only invoked if the attribute wasn’t found the usual ways. It’s good for implementing a fallback for missing attributes, and is probably the one of two you want. __getattribute__ is invoked before looking at the actual attributes on the object, and so can be … Read more