best way to distribute keyword arguments?

Question

What's the approved programming pattern for distributing keyword arguments among called functions?

Consider this contrived (and buggy) example:

def create_box(**kwargs):
    box = Box()
    set_size(box, **kwargs)
    set_appearance(box, **kwargs)

def set_size(box, width=1, height=1, length=1):
    ...

def set_appearance(box, material='cardboard', color='brown'):
    ...

Obviously the set_size() method will object to receiving material or color keyword arguments, just as set_appearance() will object to receiving width, height, or length arguments.

There's a valid argument that create_box() should make all of the keyword and defaults explicit, but the obvious implementation is rather unwieldy:

def create_box(width=1, height=1, length=1, material='cardboard', color='brown'):
    box = Box()
    set_size(box, width=width, height=height, length=length)
    set_appearance(box, material=material, color=color)

Is there a more Pythonic way to approach this?

Answer 1

You could add **kwargs as the last argument to the functions that would otherwise become annoyed.

def create_box(**kwargs):
    box = Box()
    set_size(box, **kwargs)
    set_appearance(box, **kwargs)

def set_size(box, width=1, height=1, length=1, **kwargs):
    ...

def set_appearance(box, material='cardboard', color='brown', **kwargs):
    ...