How to implement a Decorator with non-local equality?
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02-07-2019 - |
Question
Greetings, currently I am refactoring one of my programs, and I found an interesting problem.
I have Transitions in an automata. Transitions always have a start-state and an end-state. Some Transitions have a label, which encodes a certain Action that must be performed upon traversal. No label means no action. Some transitions have a condition, which must be fulfilled in order to traverse this condition, if there is no condition, the transition is basically an epsilon-transition in an NFA and will be traversed without consuming an input symbol.
I need the following operations:
- check if the transition has a label
- get this label
- add a label to a transition
- check if the transition has a condition
- get this condition
- check for equality
Judging from the first five points, this sounds like a clear decorator, with a base transition and two decorators: Labeled and Condition. However, this approach has a problem: two transitions are considered equal if their start-state and end-state are the same, the labels at both transitions are equal (or not-existing) and both conditions are the same (or not existing). With a decorator, I might have two transitions Labeled("foo", Conditional("bar", Transition("baz", "qux"))) and Conditional("bar", Labeled("foo", Transition("baz", "qux"))) which need a non-local equality, that is, the decorators would need to collect all the data and the Transition must compare this collected data on a set-base:
class Transition(object):
def __init__(self, start, end):
self.start = start
self.end = end
def get_label(self):
return None
def has_label(self):
return False
def collect_decorations(self, decorations):
return decorations
def internal_equality(self, my_decorations, other):
try:
return (self.start == other.start
and self.end == other.end
and my_decorations = other.collect_decorations())
def __eq__(self, other):
return self.internal_equality(self.collect_decorations({}), other)
class Labeled(object):
def __init__(self, label, base):
self.base = base
self.label = label
def has_label(self):
return True
def get_label(self):
return self.label
def collect_decorations(self, decorations):
assert 'label' not in decorations
decorations['label'] = self.label
return self.base.collect_decorations(decorations)
def __getattr__(self, attribute):
return self.base.__getattr(attribute)
Is this a clean approach? Am I missing something?
I am mostly confused, because I can solve this - with longer class names - using cooperative multiple inheritance:
class Transition(object):
def __init__(self, **kwargs):
# init is pythons MI-madness ;-)
super(Transition, self).__init__(**kwargs)
self.start = kwargs['start']
self.end = kwargs['end']
def get_label(self):
return None
def get_condition(self):
return None
def __eq__(self, other):
try:
return self.start == other.start and self.end == other.end
except AttributeError:
return False
class LabeledTransition(Transition):
def __init__(self, **kwargs):
super(LabeledTransition).__init__(**kwargs)
self.label = kwargs['label']
def get_label(self):
return self.label
def __eq__(self):
super_result = super(LabeledTransition, self).__eq__(other)
try:
return super_result and self.label == other.label
except AttributeError:
return False
class ConditionalTransition(Transition):
def __init__(self, **kwargs):
super(ConditionalTransition, self).__init__(**kwargs)
self.condition = kwargs['condition']
def get_condition(self):
return self.condition
def __eq__(self, other):
super_result = super(ConditionalTransition, self).__eq__(other)
try:
return super_result and self.condition = other.condition
except AttributeError:
return False
# ConditionalTransition about the same, with get_condition
class LabeledConditionalTransition(LabeledTransition, ConditionalTransition):
pass
the class LabledConditionalTransition behaves exactly as expected - and having no code in there is appealing and I do not thing MI is confusing at this size.
Of course, the third option would be to just hammer everything into a single transition class with a bunch of in has_label/has_transition.
So... I am confused. Am I missing something? Which implementation looks better? How do you handle similar cases, that is, objects which look like a Decorator could handle them, but then, such a non-local method comes around?
EDIT: Added the ConditionalTransition-class. Basically, this kinda behaves like the decorator, minus the order created by the order of creating the decorators, the transition checks for start and end being correct, the LabeledTransition-class checks for label being correct and ConditionalTransition checks for condition being correct.
Solution
I think its clear that nobody really understands your question. I would suggest putting it in context and making it shorter. As an example, here's one possible implementation of the state pattern in python, please study it to get an idea.
class State(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
def __repr__(self):
return self.name
class Automaton(object):
def __init__(self, instance, start):
self._state = start
self.transitions = instance.transitions()
def get_state(self):
return self._state
def set_state(self, target):
transition = self.transitions.get((self.state, target))
if transition:
action, condition = transition
if condition:
if condition():
if action:
action()
self._state = target
else:
self._state = target
else:
self._state = target
state = property(get_state, set_state)
class Door(object):
open = State('open')
closed = State('closed')
def __init__(self, blocked=False):
self.blocked = blocked
def close(self):
print 'closing door'
def do_open(self):
print 'opening door'
def not_blocked(self):
return not self.blocked
def transitions(self):
return {
(self.open, self.closed):(self.close, self.not_blocked),
(self.closed, self.open):(self.do_open, self.not_blocked),
}
if __name__ == '__main__':
door = Door()
automaton = Automaton(door, door.open)
print 'door is', automaton.state
automaton.state = door.closed
print 'door is', automaton.state
automaton.state = door.open
print 'door is', automaton.state
door.blocked = True
automaton.state = door.closed
print 'door is', automaton.state
the output of this programm would be:
door is open
closing door
door is closed
opening door
door is open
door is open
OTHER TIPS
From the code that was posted, the only difference between Transition and Labeled Transition is the return of get_lable() and has_label(). In which case you can compress these two a single class that sets a label attribute to None and
return self.label is not None
in the has_label() function.
Can you post the code for the ConditionalTransition
class? I think this would make it clearer.