roles 0.1.0

Pythonic implementation of the DCI (Data Context Interaction) pattern (http://www.artima.com/articles/dci_vision.html).

The difference with mixins is that this role is applied only to the subject instance, not to the subject class (alas, a new class is constructed).

Roles can be applied and revoked. Multiple roles can be applied to an instance. Revocation can happen in any particular order.

As a basic example, consider some domain class:

>>> from roles import RoleType
>>> class DomainClass(object):
...     def __init__(self, a=3):
...         self.a = a
>>> instance = DomainClass()

The instance should participate in a collaboration in which it fulfills a particular role:

>>> class MyRole(object):
...     __metaclass__ = RoleType
...     def rolefunc(self):
...          return self.a

>>> inrole = MyRole(instance)
>>> inrole       # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
<__main__.DomainClass+MyRole object at 0x...>
>>> isinstance(inrole, DomainClass)
True

Now the inrole instance can be invoked with the rolefunc() method as if it was the DomainClass’ one:

>>> inrole.rolefunc()
3