auto_list

privex.helpers.common.auto_list(obj: V, conv: Union[Type[T], Callable[[V], T]] = <class 'list'>, force_wrap=False, force_iter=False, **kw) → T[source]

Used for painless conversion of various data types into list-like objects (list / tuple / set etc.)

Ensure object obj is a list-like object of type conv, if it isn’t, then attempt to convert it into an instance of conv via either list wrapping, or list iterating, depending on the type that obj is detected to be.

Examples:

>>> auto_list('hello world')
['hello world']
>>> auto_list('lorem ipsum', conv=set)
{'lorem ipsum'}
>>> auto_list('hello world', force_iter=True)
['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', ' ', 'w', 'o', 'r', 'l', 'd']

>>> auto_list(('this', 'is', 'a', 'test',))
['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']
>>> auto_list(('this', 'is', 'a', 'test',), force_wrap=True)
[('this', 'is', 'a', 'test')]

List Wrapping

The list wrapping conversion method is when we wrap an object with list brackets, i.e. [obj]. which makes the obj a single item inside of a new list.

This is important for simple single-value data types such as str, bytes, integers, floats etc. - since using list() might simply iterate over their contents, e.g. turnining "hello" into ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o'], which is rarely what you intend when you want to convert an object into a list.

This method is used by default for the types:

str, bytes, int, float, Decimal, bool, dict

To force conversion via List Wrapping, set the argument force_wrap=True

List Iteration / Iterating

The list iteration method is when we call list(obj) to convert obj ‘s contents into a list, rather than making obj an item inside of the list.

This is important for other list-like data types such as list / set / tuple etc., since with the List Wrapping method, it would result in for example, a set {'hello', 'world'} simply being wrapped by a list [{'hello', 'world'}], instead of converting it into a list.

To force conversion via List Iteration, set the argument force_iter=True

This method is used bt default for the types:

list, set, tuple, range

any object which didn't match the list wrapping type checks and has the method: __iter__
Parameters

  • obj (V|any) – An object of practically any type, to convert into an instance type of conv

  • conv (T|type|callable) – A type which is also callable with obj as the first positional argument, to convert obj into a conv instance.

  • force_wrap (bool) – When set to True, obj will always be converted into conv using the list wrapping method conv([obj]), regardless of whether it’s a type that should or shouldn’t be wrapped.

  • force_iter (bool) – When set to True, obj will always be converted into conv using the list iterator method, i.e. conv(list(obj)), regardless of whether it’s a type that should or shouldn’t be iterated.

  • zero (bool) – Passthru argument to empty() (treat the number 0 as empty)

  • itr (bool) – Passthru argument to empty() (treat zero-length iterables as empty)

Return T|list|set|tuple data

The object obj after converting it into a conv instance