2.2.3.2 Type-specific Attribute Management

For simplicity, only the char* version will be demonstrated here; the type of the name parameter is the only difference between the char* and PyObject* flavors of the interface. This example effectively does the same thing as the generic example above, but does not use the generic support added in Python 2.2. The value in showing this is two-fold: it demonstrates how basic attribute management can be done in a way that is portable to older versions of Python, and explains how the handler functions are called, so that if you do need to extend their functionality, you'll understand what needs to be done.

The tp_getattr handler is called when the object requires an attribute look-up. It is called in the same situations where the __getattr__() method of a class would be called.

A likely way to handle this is (1) to implement a set of functions (such as newdatatype_getSize() and newdatatype_setSize() in the example below), (2) provide a method table listing these functions, and (3) provide a getattr function that returns the result of a lookup in that table. The method table uses the same structure as the tp_methods field of the type object.

static PyMethodDef newdatatype_methods[] = {
    {"getSize", (PyCFunction)newdatatype_getSize, METH_VARARGS,
     "Return the current size."},
    {"setSize", (PyCFunction)newdatatype_setSize, METH_VARARGS,
     "Set the size."},
    {NULL, NULL, 0, NULL}           /* sentinel */
};

static PyObject *
newdatatype_getattr(newdatatypeobject *obj, char *name)
{
    return Py_FindMethod(newdatatype_methods, (PyObject *)obj, name);
}

The tp_setattr handler is called when the __setattr__() or __delattr__() method of a class instance would be called. When an attribute should be deleted, the third parameter will be NULL. Here is an example that simply raises an exception; if this were really all you wanted, the tp_setattr handler should be set to NULL.

static int
newdatatype_setattr(newdatatypeobject *obj, char *name, PyObject *v)
{
    (void)PyErr_Format(PyExc_RuntimeError, "Read-only attribute: \%s", name);
    return -1;
}