Shortcuts for accessing dataset attributes

[ajasja]

Typing spectrum.dataset.x etc gets tiresome.
By overriding __getattr__ and __setattr__ it should be quite easy to redirect spectrum.x into returning spectrum.dataset.x (and of course all the other attributes of the dataset).

[odarbelaeze]

What about a property, could be a more pythonic to archive the same result?

[ajasja]

Hmm you mean the @property decorator? Could we generate all the members of the dataset as properties automatically?

The advantage of __getattr__ would be that by overriding one method all the datasets attributes would be automatically rerouted.

The pseudocode would go like

def __getattr__(name):
    if dataset has member with name then:
        return dataset.getattr(name)
   else
        raise exception

[odarbelaeze]

I don't think a property decorator would do that, but is it really good to expose all the members of dataset to the spectrum class? If so what about making spectrum to o be a subclass of dataset?

[ajasja]

Yes, that would be another option. But we did not do this, since we envisioned, that there could be several types of different spectra. So the importer fo CSV could be used to load an UVSpectra, an IRSpectra etc... And dataset was the decoupling element, since all importers return a dataset and all spectra/exporters accept a dataset.

Actually the __getattr__ trick is very similar to subclassing (what would be the diffrences?) while allowing us maximum flexibility.