Pythonic way to only do work first time a variable is called
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22-09-2019 - |
Question
my Python class has some variables that require work to calculate the first time they are called. Subsequent calls should just return the precomputed value.
I don't want to waste time doing this work unless they are actually needed by the user. So is there a clean Pythonic way to implement this use case?
My initial thought was to use property() to call a function the first time and then override the variable:
class myclass(object):
def get_age(self):
self.age = 21 # raise an AttributeError here
return self.age
age = property(get_age)
Thanks
Solution
class myclass(object):
def __init__(self):
self.__age=None
@property
def age(self):
if self.__age is None:
self.__age=21 #This can be a long computation
return self.__age
Alex mentioned you can use __getattr__
, this is how it works
class myclass(object):
def __getattr__(self, attr):
if attr=="age":
self.age=21 #This can be a long computation
return super(myclass, self).__getattribute__(attr)
__getattr__()
is invoked when the attribute doesn't exist on the object, ie. the first time you try to access age
. Every time after, age
exists so __getattr__
doesn't get called
OTHER TIPS
property
, as you've seen, will not let you override it. You need to use a slightly different approach, such as:
class myclass(object):
@property
def age(self):
if not hasattr(self, '_age'):
self._age = self._big_long_computation()
return self._age
There are other approaches, such as __getattr__
or a custom descriptor class, but this one is simpler!-)
Here is decorator from Python Cookbook for this problem:
class CachedAttribute(object):
''' Computes attribute value and caches it in the instance. '''
def __init__(self, method, name=None):
# record the unbound-method and the name
self.method = method
self.name = name or method.__name__
def __get__(self, inst, cls):
if inst is None:
# instance attribute accessed on class, return self
return self
# compute, cache and return the instance's attribute value
result = self.method(inst)
setattr(inst, self.name, result)
return result
Yes you can use properties, though lazy evaluation is also often accomplished using descriptors, see e.g: