CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7dictionary
Slaknation
Slaknation

Reputation: 1926

How to check if vars(object) is of type dictionary?

I am having a little trouble checking if vars(object) is of type dictionary. If it's not of type dictionary, than it will throw an error for doing vars(object):

if type(vars(vars(self.j)['element'])) is dict:  # exception gets thrown here if not a dictionary
    'this is a dictionary'

you can't use type(vars(object)) if vars(object) not a dictionary. so how do you check if vars(object) is a dictonary?

edit: in response to the answer below:

print type(vars(self.j)['element'])
print isinstance(vars(vars(self.j)['element']), dict)  # this is a dict
print type(vars(self.j)['beverage'])
print isinstance(vars(vars(self.j)['beverage']), dict) # exception thrown because its not a dictionary

output:

<class '__main__.Element2'>
True
<type 'str'>

    print isinstance(vars(vars(self.j)['beverage']), dict)
TypeError: vars() argument must have __dict__ attribute

edit: in response to bruno, I want to do something like this:

def are_elements_equal(self, first_element, second_element, msg=None):
    for i in vars(first_element).keys():
        if type(vars(vars(first_element)[i])) is dict:
                self.are_elements_equal(vars(first_element)[i], vars(second_element)[i])
        else:
            self.assertEqual(vars(first_element)[i], vars(second_element)[i])

Upvotes: 0

Views: 100

Answers (1)

bruno desthuilliers
bruno desthuilliers

Reputation: 77912

assuming obj as a __dict__ attribute, var(obj) will return a dict - or eventually a dict_proxy if called on a class. BUT neither a dict nor a dict_proxy have a __dict__, so vars(vars(obj)) WILL obviously raise a TypeError - in the inner call if obj as no __dict__, else in the outer call.

You could of course handle the exception with a try/except block, but since this will ALWAYS raise, it would be quite pointless. So the real problem is: why do you think you want to use vars(vars(obj)) at all ?

Upvotes: 3

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