Calling a method with getattr in Python

Question

How to call a method using getattr? I want to create a metaclass, which can call non-existing methods of some other class that start with the word 'oposite_'. The method should have the same number of arguments, but to return the opposite result.

def oposite(func):
    return lambda s, *args, **kw:  not oposite(s, *args, **kw)


class Negate(type):
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if name.startswith('oposite_'):
            return oposite(self.__getattr__(name[8:]))        
    def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
        self.__getattr__ = Negate.__getattr__


class P(metaclass=Negate):
    def yep(self):
        return True
    def maybe(self, sth):
        return sth

But the problem is that

self.__getattr__(sth) 

returns a NoneType object.

>>> p = P()
>>> p.oposite_yep()    #should be False
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#115>", line 1, in <module>
    p.oposite_yep()
TypeError: <lambda>() takes at least 1 positional argument (0 given)
>>> p.oposite_maybe(False)    #should be true

How to deal with this?

Answer 1

You forgot to handle the case where the attribute name doesn't start with 'oposite_'.

Answer 2

class Negate(type):
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if name.startswith('oposite_'):
            def oposite(*args,**kwargs):
                return not getattr(self,name[8:])(*args,**kwargs)
            return oposite
        else:
            raise AttributeError("%r object has no attribute %r" %
                                 (type(self).__name__, name))

    def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
        self.__getattr__ = Negate.__getattr__

class P(metaclass=Negate):
    def yep(self):
        return True
    def same(self,x,y):
        return x==y

p=P()
print(p.oposite_yep())
# False
print(p.oposite_same(1,2))
# True
print(p.nope())

By the way, you can also do this with a class decorator instead of a metaclass:

def Negater(cls):
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if name.startswith('oposite_'):
            def oposite(*args,**kwargs):
                return not getattr(self,name[8:])(*args,**kwargs)
            return oposite
        else:
            raise AttributeError("%r object has no attribute %r" %
                                 (type(self).__name__, name))
    setattr(cls,'__getattr__',__getattr__)
    return cls

@Negater
class P():
    ....