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Performance boost with metaclasses (Python recipe) by Martin Schoepf
ActiveState Code (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578460/)

Consider a highly dynamic system where a lot of objects are created and destroyed. If the objects are complex and have a lot of default values the following recipe may improve the performance. The more default values you have the more you will gain from it.

Python, 29 lines
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class A (object) :
    """A simple class with some internal default values"""
    def __init__ (self, x) :
        self.x     = x
        self._a    = 1000
        self._b    = 10000
        self._data = [1,2,3,4]
        self._d    = { 1 :1, 2:2, 3:3}

class A_Metaclass (type) :
    """Metaclass setting default values"""
    def __init__ (cls, name, bases, dct) :
        super(A_Metaclass, cls).__init__(name, bases, dct)
        setattr (cls, "_a",    1000)
        setattr (cls, "_b",    10000)
        setattr (cls, "_data", [1,2,3,4])
        setattr (cls, "_d",    { 1 :1, 2:2, 3:3})


class A_With_Metaclass (object) :
    """The same class as A, but internal default values set by metaclass"""
    __metaclass__ = A_Metaclass
    def __init__ (self, x) :
        self.x = x
        
from timeit import timeit
n = 10000000
print "metaclass :", timeit ("A_With_Metaclass (22)", setup = "from __main__ import A_Metaclass, A_With_Metaclass", number = n)
print "normal    :", timeit ("A                (22)", setup = "from __main__ import A",  number = n)
Tags: metaclass, performance

2 comments

James Mills 11 years, 2 months ago  # | flag

I'm sorry. This is neither useful nor reusable.

marmoute 11 years, 2 months ago  # | flag

Adding default value on the class have a performance penalty at access time:

Those extra timing:

print "### attr access"
print "metaclass :", timeit ("a._a, a._b, a._data, a._d", setup = "from __main__ import A_Metaclass, A_With_Metaclass;  a=A_With_Metaclass(22)", number = n)
print "normal    :", timeit ("a._a, a._b, a._data, a._d", setup = "from __main__ import A; a=A(22)",  number = n)

Give the following results:

### attr access
metaclass : 4.90474295616
normal    : 6.2220621109

Moreover you do not need metaclass for that. Just add them to the class namespace:

class A (object) :
    """A simple class with some internal default values"""
    _a    = 1000
    _b    = 10000
    _data = [1,2,3,4]
    _d    = { 1 :1, 2:2, 3:3}
    def __init__ (self, x) :
        self.x = x
Created by Martin Schoepf on Sun, 17 Feb 2013 (MIT)
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