Give stores sub-scripting abilities

[thorwhalen]

Problem: Give classes sub-scripting abilities

Solution: Since 3.7, __class_getitem__

class A:
    filt = None
    def __class_getitem__(cls, filt):
        cls.filt = filt
        return cls  # (1) 

assert A.filt is None
AA = A[{'a': 2}]
assert AA.filt == {'a': 2}
aa = AA()
assert aa.filt == {'a': 2}

Note in (1) that anything can be returned. Perhaps information about the class, a random joke, etc.

It seems like the original intent was typing (see PEP 560), but personally I'm hoping to apply it to be able to make specialized subclasses with an intuitive (?) concise language.

Imagine a (py2store) store that points to dimensioned data source (think SQL table, mongo collection, or even files with parametrized paths). Right now, if we wanted to create a sub-store (class) from a more general store, we'd do something like:

@wrap_kvs(...)
@cached_keys(...)
@filt_iter(...)
class SubStore(SourceStore):
    """Will filter for kind='tags' and provide values with only the fields ('bt', 'tt', 'tag')"""

If you want to reuse that mechanism often, you might make a decorator factory and use it when ever you need to make such a thing:

def mk_sub_store(...filter_kwargs, ...wrap_kvs_kwargs, ...):
    ...

SubStore = mk_sub_store(SourceStore)

But maybe (just maybe) it's more natural to put the mk_sub_store logic in the __class_getitem__ of the SourceStore (or higher) and do it this way:

SubStore = SourceStore[...filter_kwargs, ...wrap_kvs_kwargs]

To a data scientist that is used to working with multi-dimensional arrays/tables, the sub_stable = table[:, 2:8, :] notation is a no-brainer on instances of tables. Therefore the notation MyTable = Table[:, 2:8, :] on classes (that then just need to be instantiated to get the desired subtable from any source) should be natural.

[thorwhalen]

Note that uses of __class_getitem__, beyond the original intent of typing, are discouraged.

Of course. As usual.