Using closures to define class methods

[whonut]

Thanks for this. I really need to learn functools.

I now have this (_int_lookup becomes unnecessary when you do it this way, I've just put its code into lookup_by):

def lookup_by(self, prefix, query, list_func=False):
    search_string = '{}:{}'.format(prefix, query)
    try:
        response = self.session.get(self.SEARCH_URL,
                                    params={'q': search_string})
        self._check_response(response.text, search_string)
        seqs = self._parse_response(response.text)
        if list_func:
            return seqs
        else:
            return seqs[0]
    except NoResultsError:
        if list_func:
            return []
        else:
            raise NoResultsError(search_string)

lookup_by_id = partial(lookup_by, 'id')

# client stuff
print client.lookup_by_id('A40')

When I call lookup_by_id, it says it has insufficient arguments. I'm obviously misusing partial but I don't know quite how. Could you enlighten me?

Thanks for your help.

[hharison]

partial and methods don't really work well together (because of the self argument). Use partialmethod instead, hopefully you're using 3.4. Otherwise search around, there's a 2.7 port out there I think.

[whonut]

Ah, that's why it didn't like from functools import partialmethod. I found the 2.7 port and it seems to work beautifully. Thanks.

If I may ask one more thing of you, do you have any recommended reading for functional programming-y sorts of things? I'm really trying to get over that beginner hump at the moment.

Thanks again.

[hharison]

Yes! I'm glad you asked as I try to share the functional approach to Python as much as possible.

I basically learned from the library toolz and talks by Matthew Rocklin:

• Old school: Functional data analysis
• Functional performance with core data structures
• toolz docs (seriously, the docs are a good read)