I'm adding attributes to a module at runtime using the following inside a loop:
this_module = sys.modules[__name__]
setattr(this_module, attr_name, attr_value)
When I call print dir(this_module) from the module, it shows the attributes. Great!
When I import the module and try to use the attribute in a decorator, an AttributeError exception keeps getting thrown. To debug, I called dir() on the imported module and none of the attributes added on the fly are listed!
I even added the attribute names to __all__ for the import * and still nothing!
Any ideas would be great. Also, please let me know of any terminology I could be missing. I wasn't able to find an answer searching Google.
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Per a suggestion by Kevin, I added a dictionary to my Flask application (instead of his suggestion of top-level, just for ease of testing) and added those attributes to it:
app.security = dict()
In the loop:
app.security[attr_name] = attr_value
In the module where the decorator is used ('time_entry' is an attribute name and it holds a class instance):
@app.security['time_entry'].need()
When I try to start the server, I now get this error:
@security["time_write"].require()
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
I've created a workaround for my particular problem. It's not a solution and I still plan on investigating it further once this project is finished.
I created a dummy class and then set an attribute with an instance of it in my Flask application.
class Security: pass
app.security = Security()
Then, I set the attributes directly to the Security class:
setattr(app.security, attr_name, attr_value)
Again, it doesn't resolve why those module-level attributes I was creating at runtime weren't being imported. I'll come back and edit this once I have the answer to that question.