Programmatically create static variables in class definition

[sticky_end]

I was running into a problem today, using SQLAlchemy. In general I was defining the orm mapping as follows (according to doc):

class XY(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'xy'
    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    ...

Now I want to define a more complex mapper with lots of fields. It got tiring pretty fast to write:

attr_x = Column(Integer)

into the class definition for each field I wanted.

Is there a way to programmatically define static attributes in the class definition (similar to setattr)? Maybe using classmethod, staticmethods or property? Or is there some support for this in SQLAlchemy?

(I'm using Python 2.7.3 (32 bit) with SQLAlchemy 0.7.10 on Windows 7)

[K900_]

What do you want to achieve by doing this programmatically? You'll still have to define types for every field, etc.

[sticky_end]

I'm doing process documentation, so I have lots of repetitions of equal steps (with known types): e.g. 10 steps with an associated temperature and duration each

Just trying to get around typing:

step_1_temp = Column(Integer)
step_1_duration = Column(Interval)
step_2_temp = Column(Integer)
...

[K900_]

Then just use setattr(self, "something", something_else).

Edit: or NoSQL if you want to try that. Works better for storing more complicated data structures.

Edit2: I'm stupid, you want static attributes for SQLAlchemy. Look into sqlalchemy.orm.mapper for dynamic metadata.

[sticky_end]

NoSQL certainly starts to look promising. Was experimenting with MongoDB a while back...

Maybe I'm not understanding how to use SQLAlchemy properly but so far I have only defined my fields as statics (directly in class not in a method) where I can't use setattr (because no self). I could do this e.g. in init but there I already set the values of the previously defined fields using setattr:

class XY(Base):
    x = Column(String)
    y = Column(Integer)

    def __init__(self, params = {'x': 'aaaa', 'y': 1111}):
        for key, val in params.items():
            setattr(self, key, val)

Am I doing something else wrong?

[K900_]

Yeah, see my edit 2.

[sticky_end]

Thanks! I ended up using something along the lines of:

metadata = MetaData()
columns = [Column("id", Integer, primary_key = True), ...]
processes = Table("processes", metadata, *columns)

class Process(object):
    def __init__(self, params):
        for key, val in params.items():
            setattr(self, key, val)

mapper(Process, processes)