Decorator to mark a method to be executed no more than once even if called several times

Question

I will go straight to the example:

class Foo:
  @execonce
  def initialize(self):
    print 'Called'

>>> f1 = Foo()
>>> f1.initialize()
Called
>>> f1.initialize()
>>> f2 = Foo()
>>> f2.initialize()
Called
>>> f2.initialize()
>>>

I tried to define execonce but could not write one that works with methods.

PS: I cannot define the code in __init__ for initialize has to be called sometime after the object is initialized. cf - cmdln issue 13

Answer 1

import functools

def execonce(f):

    @functools.wraps(f)
    def donothing(*a, **k):
        pass

    @functools.wraps(f)
    def doit(self, *a, **k):
        try:
            return f(self, *a, **k)
        finally:
            setattr(self, f.__name__, donothing)

    return doit

Answer 2

You could do something like this:

class Foo:
  def __init__(self):
    self.initialize_called = False
  def initialize(self):
    if self.initalize_called:
        return
    self.initialize_called = True
    print 'Called'

This is straightforward and easy to read. There is another instance variable and some code required in the __init__ function, but it would satisfy your requirements.

Answer 3

try something similar to this

def foo():
     try:
             foo.called
     except:
             print "called"
             foo.called = True

methods and functions are objects. you can add methods and attributes on them. This can be useful for your case. If you want a decorator, just have the decorator allocate the method but first, check the flag. If the flag is found, a null method is returned and consequently executed.