Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

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cached-property: Don't copy/paste code

In Python, the @cached_property decorator is a really nice piece of code. What it does is it caches the result of a property call. The cached result will persist as long as the instance does, so if the instance is passed around and the function subsequently invoked, the cached result will be returned.

If that doesn't make much sense, below is a snippet of code that shows the code and demonstrates it in action. As always, I'm using pytest to validate my code:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import time

class cached_property(object):
    """ A property that is only computed once per instance and then replaces
        itself with an ordinary attribute. Deleting the attribute resets the
        property.

        Source: https://github.com/bottlepy/bottle/commit/fa7733e075da0d790d809aa3d2f53071897e6f76
        """

    def __init__(self, func):
        self.__doc__ = getattr(func, '__doc__')
        self.func = func

    def __get__(self, obj, cls):
        if obj is None:
            return self
        value = obj.__dict__[self.func.__name__] = self.func(obj)
        return value

class SlowClass1(object):

    @cached_property
    def very_slow(self):
        """Represents a performance heavy property."""
        time.sleep(1)  # Wait a WHOLE second!
        return "I am slooooow"

def test_slow_class1():
    # Instantiate the slow class
    slow_class = SlowClass1()

    # Start the clock!
    start = datetime.now()

    # Call the property. This time it's really slow...
    assert slow_class.very_slow == "I am slooooow"

    # Check that it took at least a second to run
    assert timedelta(milliseconds=1000) >= start - datetime.now()

    # Call the property a second time. This time it runs fast.
    assert slow_class.very_slow == "I am slooooow"

    # Second time running, should take a TINY amount of time.
    # Should take just a microsecond, but we'll play a test for and test
    #   for a maximim of at least 100 milliseconds.
    assert timedelta(milliseconds=1100) > start - datetime.now()

This is great for encapsulating slow database queries, fetching results from third-party REST APIs, performing slow algorithms, and anything else where you would want to catch the results. Pretty neat, yeah!

While originally implemented for web frameworks such as Django, Flask, Pyramid, and Bottle, I've copy/pasted the cached_property property from non-web project to project as a quick way to give my code a little boost. I got tired of doing this, and on May 17th, 2014 I decided to release it as a package called cached-property on PyPI. Using it is easy:

# assuming you've already done "pip install cached-property"
from cached_property import cached_property

class SlowClass2(object):

    @cached_property
    def very_slow(self):
        """Represents a performance heavy property."""
        time.sleep(1)  # Wait a WHOLE second!
        return "I am slooooow"

def test_slow_class2():
    # Instantiate the slow class
    slow_class = SlowClass2()

    # Start the clock!
    start = datetime.now()

    # Call the property. This time it's really slow...
    assert slow_class.very_slow == "I am slooooow"

    # Check that it took at least a second to run
    assert timedelta(milliseconds=1000) >= start - datetime.now()

    # Call the property a second time. This time it runs fast.
    assert slow_class.very_slow == "I am slooooow"

    # Second time running, should take a TINY amount of time.
    # Should take just a microsecond, but we'll play a test for and test
    #   for a maximim of at least 100 milliseconds.
    assert timedelta(milliseconds=1100) > start - datetime.now()

Hooray! No more copy/pasting for me! I was very pleased with myself.

Little did I know how fortunate I was for having released this package.

Don't Copy/Paste Code

The very next day after I released the cached-property package, Tin Tvrtković opened an issue asking for better multithreaded support. To my shock and embarressment, my copy/pasted code could have been disastrous if brought into the wrong project. I had blindly been assuming that the code I hadn't bothered to try and understand worked under any situation, when in reality it had been designed for working within the context of a web framework.

Ultimately, Tin submitted a pull request, and now the cached-property package also includes a @threaded_cached_property decorator. Thank you Tin!

However, the lessons of the experience had been burned into my brain.

Lessons Learned

  1. Don't copy/paste code blindly from project to project.
  2. If you are repeatedly moving code from project to project, take the time to understand what the code is actually doing.
  3. Instead of copy/pasting code from project to project, make a package and ask for input from others. If making a package feels like too much work, cookiecutter-pypackage makes creating new packages really easy.

Going forward

One exciting development has been the discussion to include a cached_property decorator in core Python. Even if my contribution to the effort has been merely the encapsulation of the code, it's nice to know I may have some small part in the development of the language.

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Tags: python django flask pypi pyramid
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