[Fixed]-What method attributes are used in Django?

funny that you should ask about this, I was just a bit surprised by a different use of this in the django documentation earlier today:

def upper_case_name(obj):
    return ("%s %s" % (obj.first_name, obj.last_name)).upper()
upper_case_name.short_description = 'Name'
# !!! another occurrence of a "method attribute," an attribute
# assigned to a function object.

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = (upper_case_name,)

So, what this means, essentially, is that function definitions are a type of object. A more familiar way of saying this might be:

>>> def myfunc():
...   return "myvalue"

# 'myfunc' is now an object of type 'function' in the local scope. observe:

>>> type(myfunc)
<type: 'function'>

# you can, of course call __call__ on 'myfunc':
>>> myfunc()
"myvalue"
>>> myfunc.__call__()
"myvalue"

# and because 'myfunc' is also a normal object, you can define attributes on it.
myfunc.someattribute = 'somevalue'
myfunc.is_a_function = True
myfunc.takes_args = False

So, your question has a bit to do with the idea that python is “objects all the way down,” that is, that everything in python is an object.

Now why is this useful? Suppose you want to collect and use some metadata on a set of functions (or methods) that you’re writing:

from operator import attrgetter

def add(x, y):
    return x + y

def subtract(x, y):
    return x - y

def get_attribute_value(obj, attr):
    return attrgetter(attr)(obj)

add.takes_args = True
add.number_of_args = 2
add.type_of_args = [int, int]
add.uses_black_magic = False

subtract.takes_args = True
subtract.number_of_args = 2
subtract.type_of_args = [int, int]
subtract.uses_black_magic = False

get_attribute_value.takes_args = True
get_attribute_value.number_of_args = 2
get_attribute_value.type_of_args = [object, str]
get_attribute_value.uses_black_magic = True

You could then use these ‘method attributes’ in a useful way:

def perform_function_checks(function_list):
    for afunc in function_list:
        if getattr(afunc, 'takes_args'):
            print "function '%s' takes args! how unusual!" % (afunc.__name__,)
        if getattr(afunc, 'number_of_args'):
            print "function '%s' takes %s args." % (afunc.__name__, afunc.number_of_args)
        if getattr(afunc, 'type_of_args'):
            print "function '%s' takes %s args: %s" (afunc.__name__, len(afunc.type_of_args), [", and ".join(str(item)) for item in afunc.type_of_args])
        if getattr(afunc, 'uses_black_magic'):
            print "oh no! function '%s' uses black magic!" % (afunc.__name__,)

perform_function_checks([add, subtract, get_attribute_value])

# prints:
# function 'add' takes args! how unusual!
# function 'add' takes 2 args.
# function 'add' takes 2 args: <type 'int'>, and <type 'int'>
# function 'subtract' takes args! how unusual!
# function 'subtract' takes 2 args.
# function 'subtract' takes 2 args: <type 'int'>, and <type 'int'>
# function 'get_attribute_value' takes args! how unusual!
# function 'get_attribute_value' takes 2 args.
# function 'get_attribute_value' takes 2 args: <type 'object'>, and <type 'str'>
# oh no! function 'get_attribute_value' uses black magic!

Now, of course, the above is for illustrative purposes only, if you were actually trying to do this type of introspection on functions and objects you’d probably want to use the ‘inspect’ module, rather than adding your own bizarro metadata: http://docs.python.org/library/inspect.html

For more information on this topic, I’d recommend this post:

http://www.cafepy.com/article/python_types_and_objects/python_types_and_objects.html

— EDIT:

sorry, I didn’t address your “implementation that allows method attributes to be callable” under addendum #2.

Your example there is a bit of a red herring in this discussion. What’s going on there, is that someone is using the @property decorator to decorate a method to make it look like a property (a.k.a. ‘attribute’). Consider this example:

# let's define a simple class
class Foo():
    # and a "normal" attribute
    an_attribute = 'a value'
    # now a method that we'll decorate with the @property decorator
    @property
    def what_kind(self):
        return str(self.__class__.__name__)

# now, instances of our Foo class will have the attribute '.what_kind'.

>>> bar = Foo()

# bar is now an instance of foo.

>>> bar.an_attribute
"a value"

# and finally our decorated method:

>>> bar.what_kind
"Foo"

Note that we did not have to call ‘what_kind’ above to return the value. I think that all the @property decorator does is automatically call .__call__()

so, what the author of that post is doing is making it look to django that you’re just adding a “plain old” attribute to the class, when, in fact, .short_description and .votes_today are actually methods.

Here’s more information on the @property decorator/function (which is builtin, BTW, so you don’t need to import it):
http://adam.gomaa.us/blog/2008/aug/11/the-python-property-builtin/

— EDIT: fixed a couple of markup problems, and a typo.