DictWrap: Create or access massive nested dictionaries with ease.

dictutils.py

class DictWrap(object):
  """ Wrap an existing dict, or create a new one, and access with either dot 
    notation or key lookup.

    The attribute _data is reserved and stores the underlying dictionary.
    When using the += operator with create=True, the empty nested dict is 
    replaced with the operand, effectively creating a default dictionary
    of mixed types.

    args:
      d({}): Existing dict to wrap, an empty dict is created by default
      create(True): Create an empty, nested dict instead of raising a KeyError

    example:
      >>>dw = DictWrap({'pp':3})
      >>>dw.a.b += 2
      >>>dw.a.b += 2
      >>>dw.a['c'] += 'Hello'
      >>>dw.a['c'] += ' World'
      >>>dw.a.d
      >>>print dw._data
      {'a': {'c': 'Hello World', 'b': 4, 'd': {}}, 'pp': 3}

  """

  def __init__(self, d=None, create=True):
    if d is None:
      d = {}
    supr = super(DictWrap, self)
    supr.__setattr__('_data', d)
    supr.__setattr__('__create', create)

  def __getattr__(self, name):
    try:
      value = self._data[name]
    except KeyError:
      if not super(DictWrap, self).__getattribute__('__create'):
        raise
      value = {}
      self._data[name] = value

    if hasattr(value, 'items'):
      create = super(DictWrap, self).__getattribute__('__create')
      return DictWrap(value, create)
    return value

  def __setattr__(self, name, value):
    self._data[name] = value

  def __getitem__(self, key):
    try:
      value = self._data[key]
    except KeyError:
      if not super(DictWrap, self).__getattribute__('__create'):
        raise
      value = {}
      self._data[key] = value

    if hasattr(value, 'items'):
      create = super(DictWrap, self).__getattribute__('__create')
      return DictWrap(value, create)
    return value

  def __setitem__(self, key, value):
    self._data[key] = value

  def __iadd__(self, other):
    if self._data:
      raise TypeError("A Nested dict will only be replaced if it's empty")
    else:
      return other

  def __call__(self, keys, default=0):
    """Normalize dictionary
    
      Recursively adds keys only to dicts that contain non-dict
      values, ie. if all values are dicts, then keys are not added

    args:
      keys: iterable of dictionary keys to create
      default: default value for each key (deep copy)

    """

    root_normalized = False
    for child in self._data.values():

      if isinstance(child, Mapping):
        DictWrap(child)(keys, default)

      elif not root_normalized:
        for key in keys:
          if self._data.get(key, None) is None:
            self._data[key] = deepcopy(default)
        root_normalized = True