DecoratorTools 1.3

Use class and function decorators -- even in Python 2.3!

Want to use decorators, but still need to support Python 2.3? Wish you could have class decorators, decorate arbitrary assignments, or match decorated function signatures to their original functions? Then you need “DecoratorTools”. Some quick examples:

# Method decorator example
from peak.util.decorators import decorate

class Demo1(object):
    decorate(classmethod)   # equivalent to @classmethod
    def example(cls):
        print "hello from", cls


# Class decorator example
from peak.util.decorators import decorate_class

def my_class_decorator():
    def decorator(cls):
        print "decorating", cls
        return cls
    decorate_class(decorator)

class Demo2:
    my_class_decorator()

# "decorating <class Demo2>" will be printed when execution gets here

Installing DecoratorTools (using "easy_install DecoratorTools" or "setup.py install") gives you access to the peak.util.decorators module. The tools in this module have been bundled for years inside of PEAK, PyProtocols, RuleDispatch, and the zope.interface package, so they have been widely used and tested. (Unit tests are also included, of course.)

This standalone version is backward-compatible with the bundled versions, so you can mix and match decorators from this package with those provided by zope.interface, TurboGears, etc.

For complete documentation, see the DecoratorTools manual.

Changes since version 1.2:

• Added rewrap() function and template_function decorator to support signature matching for decorated functions. (These features are similar to the ones provided by Michele Simionato’s “decorator” package, but do not require Python 2.4 and don’t change the standard idioms for creating decorator functions.)

• decorate_class() will no longer apply duplicate class decorator callbacks unless the allow_duplicates argument is true.

Changes since version 1.1:

• Fixed a problem where instances of different struct types could equal each other

Changes since version 1.0:

• The struct() decorator makes it easy to create tuple-like data structure types, by decorating a constructor function.