In Part I of these series about Python's collections module, we talked about the Counter class and its usage. In this blog post, we will be looking at another class in this module: ChainMap.
Let's say that we are building this awesome web app which is expected to bring us billions of dollars. In this app, we have two environments: development and production. Each of these environments has its own configurations and we store those configs in dictionaries, like this:
development = {'app_name': 'Billions', 'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'development_user'}
production = {'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'}
When deploying our app in production, we first look up the production dictionary for a value. If nothing is found, then we look it up from the development dictionary. Nothing new, classic config; production overrides development.
To do that, let's create a function called get_config, which takes name as a parameter and returns the result if it finds it, or else None:
>>> def get_config(name):
... if name in production:
... return production[name]
...
... if name in development:
... return development[name]
...
... return None
Let's test it:
>>> get_config('database')
'222.44.55.16'
>>> get_config('db_username')
'production_user'
>>> get_config('app_name')
'Billions'
>>> get_config('api_key') is None
True
Looks like it is working well. Please note that this method is for production only. In development, we would first search in the development dict and only then production.
This is working well, but I don't like it. There has to be a better way. What if I combine them in one dict? Like this:
>>> development = {'app_name': 'Billions', 'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'development_user'}
>>> production = {'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'}
>>>
>>> common = dict()
>>> common.update(development)
>>> common.update(production)
Looks good. Let's test it:
>>> common.get('database')
'222.44.55.16'
>>> common.get('db_username')
'production_user'
>>> common.get('app_name')
'Billions'
>>> common.get('api_key') is None
True
Cool! It is behaving in the same way as the method we wrote above. However, we did it without having to write a function.
Well, it turns out that there is even better way. Welcome ChainMap!
Basically, what it does is to group multiple dicts into one, updateable view which has the same interface as the ordinary dict (with some additions, of course). Let's see it in action:
>>> from collections import ChainMap
>>>
>>> development = {'app_name': 'Billions', 'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'development_user'}
>>> production = {'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'}
>>>
>>> chain = ChainMap(production, development)
>>>
>>> chain.get('database')
'222.44.55.16'
>>> chain.get('db_username')
'production_user'
>>> chain.get('app_name')
'Billions'
>>> chain.get('api_key') is None
True
Awesome! Look how much cleaner it got. With one single line, we accomplished all those things that we did above.
Other Features
As I mentioned above, it looks and behaves just like an ordinary dict. However, it has some extra functionality.
You can see the list of comprising dictionaries:
>>> chain.maps
[{'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'}, {'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'development_user', 'app_name': 'Billions'}]
You can reverse this order:
>>> chain.maps = list(reversed(chain.maps))
>>> chain.maps
[{'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'development_user', 'app_name': 'Billions'}, {'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'}]
This means that now when look something up, it will first loop up the development dictionary because we reversed the order:
>>> chain.get('db_username')
'development_user'
Cool!
You can also add another dictionary to the group:
>>> most_important_config = {'db_username': 'I am the king'}
>>> chain = chain.new_child(most_important_config)
>>> chain.get('db_username')
'I am the king'
As you can see, the one we just added was added as the first child and thus it will look it up first.
And lastly, you can see parents of this chain which basically means see all comprising dictionaries except the first one:
>>> >>> chain.parents
ChainMap({'database': '132.123.33.2', 'db_username': 'jahongirr', 'app_name': 'Billions'}, {'database': '222.44.55.16', 'db_username': 'production_user'})
As you can see here, contents of most_important_config is missing as it is the first element of the ChainMap.
Conclusion
In this blog post, we saw what ChainMap is, how to use it and most importantly why to use it. Always learn why something should be used. Otherwise, it is easy to forget or misuse it.
Fight on!