How to turn these functions generic

Question

I wanted to shorten my code, since i`m having more functions like this. I was wondering if I could use getattr() to do something like this guy asked.

Well, here it goes what I`ve got:

def getAllMarkersFrom(db, asJSON=False):
    '''Gets all markers from given database. Returns list or Json string'''
    markers = []
    for marker in db.markers.find():
        markers.append(marker)
    if not asJSON:
        return markers
    else:
        return json.dumps(markers, default=json_util.default)

def getAllUsersFrom(db, asJSON=False):
    '''Gets all users from given database. Returns list or Json string'''
    users = []
    for user in db.users.find():
        users.append(user)
    if not asJSON:
        return users
    else:
        return json.dumps(users, default=json_util.default)

I`m using pymongo and flask helpers on JSON.

What I wanted is to make a single getAllFrom(x,db) function that accepts any type of object. I don`t know how to do this, but I wanted to call db.X.find() where X is passed through the function.

Well, there it is. Hope you can help me. Thank you!

Answer 1

I would say that its better to have separate functions for each task. And then you can have decorators for common functionality between different functions. For example:

@to_json
def getAllUsersFrom(db):
    return list(db.users.find())

enjoy!