Manager / Container class, how to?

Question

I am currently designing a software which needs to manage a certain hardware setup.

The hardware setup is as following :

System - The system contains two identical devices, and has certain functionality relative to the entire system.

Device - Each device contains two identical sub devices, and has certain functionality relative to both sub devices.

Sub device - Each sub device has 4 configurable entities (Controlled via the same hardware command - thus I don't count them as a sub-sub device).

What I want to achieve :

I want to control all configurable entities via the system manager (the entities are counted in a serial way), meaning I would be able to do the following :

system_instance = system_manager_class(some_params)
system_instance.some_func(0) # configure device_manager[0].sub_device_manager[0].entity[0]
system_instance.some_func(5) # configure device_manager[0].sub_device_manager[1].entity[1]
system_instance.some_func(8) # configure device_manager[1].sub_device_manager[1].entity[0]

What I have thought of doing :

I was thinking of creating an abstract class, which contains all sub device functions (with a call to a conversion function) and have the system_manager, device_manager and sub_device_manager inherit it. Thus all classes will have the same function name and I will be able to access them via the system manager. Something around these lines :

class abs_sub_device():
    @staticmethod
    def convert_entity(self):
        sub_manager = None
        sub_entity_num = None
        pass

    def set_entity_to_2(entity_num):
        sub_manager, sub_manager_entity_num = self.convert_entity(entity_num)
        sub_manager.some_func(sub_manager_entity_num)


class system_manager(abs_sub_device):
    def __init__(self):
        self.device_manager_list = [] # Initiliaze device list
        self.device_manager_list.append(device_manager())
        self.device_manager_list.append(device_manager())

    def convert_entity(self, entity_num):
        relevant_device_manager = self.device_manager_list[entity_num // 4]
        relevant_entity         = entity_num % 4
        return relevant_device_manage, relevant_entity

class device_manager(abs_sub_device):
    def __init__(self):
        self.sub_device_manager_list = [] # Initiliaze sub device list
        self.sub_device_manager_list.append(sub_device_manager())
        self.sub_device_manager_list.append(sub_device_manager())        

    def convert_entity(self, entity_num):
        relevant_sub_device_manager = self.sub_device_manager_list[entity_num // 4]
        relevant_entity         = entity_num % 4
        return relevant_sub_device_manager, relevant_entity

class sub_device_manager(abs_sub_device):
    def __init__(self): 
        self.entity_list = [0] * 4

    def set_entity_to_2(self, entity_num):
        self.entity_list[entity_num] = 2

• The code is for generic understanding of my design, not for actual functionality.

The problem :

It seems to me that the system I am trying to design is really generic and that there must be a built-in python way to do this, or that my entire object oriented look at it is wrong.

I would really like to know if some one has a better way of doing this.

Answer 1

After much thinking, I think I found a pretty generic way to solve the issue, using a combination of decorators, inheritance and dynamic function creation.

The main idea is as following :

1) Each layer dynamically creates all sub layer relevant functions for it self (Inside the init function, using a decorator on the init function)

2) Each function created dynamically converts the entity value according to a convert function (which is a static function of the abs_container_class), and calls the lowers layer function with the same name (see make_convert_function_method).

3) This basically causes all sub layer function to be implemented on the higher level with zero code duplication.

def get_relevant_class_method_list(class_instance):
    method_list = [func for func in dir(class_instance) if callable(getattr(class_instance, func)) and not func.startswith("__") and not func.startswith("_")]
    return method_list

def make_convert_function_method(name):
    def _method(self, entity_num, *args):
        sub_manager, sub_manager_entity_num = self._convert_entity(entity_num)
        function_to_call = getattr(sub_manager, name)
        function_to_call(sub_manager_entity_num, *args)        
    return _method


def container_class_init_decorator(function_object):
    def new_init_function(self, *args):
        # Call the init function :
        function_object(self, *args)
        # Get all relevant methods (Of one sub class is enough)
        method_list = get_relevant_class_method_list(self.container_list[0])
        # Dynamically create all sub layer functions :
        for method_name in method_list:
            _method = make_convert_function_method(method_name)
            setattr(type(self), method_name, _method)

    return new_init_function


class abs_container_class():
    @staticmethod
    def _convert_entity(self):
        sub_manager = None
        sub_entity_num = None
        pass

class system_manager(abs_container_class):
    @container_class_init_decorator
    def __init__(self):
        self.device_manager_list = [] # Initiliaze device list
        self.device_manager_list.append(device_manager())
        self.device_manager_list.append(device_manager())
        self.container_list = self.device_manager_list

    def _convert_entity(self, entity_num):
        relevant_device_manager = self.device_manager_list[entity_num // 4]
        relevant_entity         = entity_num % 4
        return relevant_device_manager, relevant_entity

class device_manager(abs_container_class):
    @container_class_init_decorator
    def __init__(self):
        self.sub_device_manager_list = [] # Initiliaze sub device list
        self.sub_device_manager_list.append(sub_device_manager())
        self.sub_device_manager_list.append(sub_device_manager())    
        self.container_list = self.sub_device_manager_list

    def _convert_entity(self, entity_num):
        relevant_sub_device_manager = self.sub_device_manager_list[entity_num // 4]
        relevant_entity         = entity_num % 4
        return relevant_sub_device_manager, relevant_entity

class sub_device_manager():
    def __init__(self): 
        self.entity_list = [0] * 4

    def set_entity_to_value(self, entity_num, required_value):
        self.entity_list[entity_num] = required_value
        print("I set the entity to : {}".format(required_value))

# This is used for auto completion purposes (Using pep convention)
class auto_complete_class(system_manager, device_manager, sub_device_manager):
    pass


system_instance = system_manager() # type: auto_complete_class
system_instance.set_entity_to_value(0, 3)

There is still a little issue with this solution, auto-completion would not work since the highest level class has almost no static implemented function. In order to solve this I cheated a bit, I created an empty class which inherited from all layers and stated to the IDE using pep convention that it is the type of the instance being created (# type: auto_complete_class).