Use Dot String to Access DotMap Paths

[awagneratzendesk]

I have a piece of software that outputs dictionary mapping in dot notation. I was hoping to be able to assign the dot notation to a variable and pass it to a DotMap for a lookup but that does not seem possible.

mydict = {
  "my": {
      "dot": {
        "notation": 1
      }
    }
}
m = DotMap(mydict)
my_dotnotation = "my.dot.notation"

print(m.lookup(my_dotnotation)

I would expect that code to print "1". Just noting this down here as a nice to have given that it looks like that is what #27 was also looking for.

https://github.com/cdgriffith/Box#box-dots actually looks to have that functionality.

[tsai0009]

Also setting a dictionary value will not work.

ie. you cannot do this:

x = blah.blah.blah
m.x = "test"

it would translate to:

{"x": "test")

and not:

{"blah": {"blah": {"blah": "test"}}}

[drgrib]

I don't use Python enough anymore to justify the amount of effort it would take me to implement this. Almost all of my personal development is in Go now.

You are welcome to create a PR that adds the feature and doesn't break the unit tests (or appropriately modifies them) and adds a flag to disable it with DotMap(_dotStringAccess=False).

[ocervell]

@drgrib it wouldn't be that hard IMO (but very useful).

Something like this should do:

def lookup(self, path):
    dotted_path = path.split(".")
    current = self
    for piece in dotted_path:
         current = getattr(current, piece)
    return current

The hard part would be to be able to rewrite getattr so that getattr(dotmap_dict, 'a.b.c.d') works, but the solution above would be a pretty good temp solution.

[beoboo]

This should be doable with something like this: https://vinta.ws/code/dot-notation-obj-x-y-z-for-nested-objects-and-dictionaries-in-python.html