NIL: .to write(1) ~ help:about

Here’s a small function that walks over any^* Python object and yields the objects contained within (if any) along with the path to reach them. I wrote it and am using it to validate a deserialized datastructure, but you can probably use it for many things. In fact, I’m rather surprised I didn’t find something like this on the web already, and perhaps it should go in itertools.

Edit: Since the original post I added infinite recursion protection following Eli and Greg’s good advice, added Python 3 compatibility and did some refactoring (which means I had to add proper unit test). You will always be able to get the latest version here, on ActiveState’s Python Cookbook (at least until it makes its way into stdlib, fingers crossed…).

from collections import Mapping, Set, Sequence

# dual python 2/3 compatability, inspired by the "six" library
string_types = (str, unicode) if str is bytes else (str, bytes)
iteritems = lambda mapping: getattr(mapping, 'iteritems', mapping.items)()

def objwalk(obj, path=(), memo=None):
    if memo is None:
        memo = set()
    iterator = None
    if isinstance(obj, Mapping):
        iterator = iteritems
    elif isinstance(obj, (Sequence, Set)) and not isinstance(obj, string_types):
        iterator = enumerate
    if iterator: 
        if id(obj) not in memo:
            memo.add(id(obj))
            for path_component, value in iterator(obj):
                for result in objwalk(value, path + (path_component,), memo):
                    yield result
            memo.remove(id(obj))
    else:       
        yield path, obj

And here’s a little bit of sample usage:

>>> tuple(objwalk(True))
(((), True),)
>>> tuple(objwalk({}))
()
>>> tuple(objwalk([1,2,3]))
(((0,), 1), ((1,), 2), ((2,), 3))
>>> tuple(objwalk({"http": {"port": 80, "interface": "0.0.0.0"}}))
((('http', 'interface'), '0.0.0.0'), (('http', 'port'), 80))
>>> 

"any" is a strong word and Python is flexible language; I wrote this function to work with container objects that respect the ABCs in the collections module, which mostly cover the usual builtin types and their subclasses. If there’s something significant I missed, I’d be happy to hear about it.