How to dynamically change base class of instances at runtime?

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Ok, again, this is not something you should normally do, this is for informational purposes only.

Where Python looks for a method on an instance object is determined by the __mro__ attribute of the class which defines that object (the M ethod R esolution O rder attribute). Thus, if we could modify the __mro__ of Person, we’d get the desired behaviour. Something like:

setattr(Person, '__mro__', (Person, Friendly, object))

The problem is that __mro__ is a readonly attribute, and thus setattr won’t work. Maybe if you’re a Python guru there’s a way around that, but clearly I fall short of guru status as I cannot think of one.

A possible workaround is to simply redefine the class:

def modify_Person_to_be_friendly():
    # so that we're modifying the global identifier 'Person'
    global Person

    # now just redefine the class using type(), specifying that the new
    # class should inherit from Friendly and have all attributes from
    # our old Person class
    Person = type('Person', (Friendly,), dict(Person.__dict__)) 

def main():
    modify_Person_to_be_friendly()
    p = Person()
    p.hello()  # works!

What this doesn’t do is modify any previously created Person instances to have the hello() method. For example (just modifying main()):

def main():
    oldperson = Person()
    ModifyPersonToBeFriendly()
    p = Person()
    p.hello()  
    # works!  But:
    oldperson.hello()
    # does not

If the details of the type call aren’t clear, then read e-satis’ excellent answer on ‘What is a metaclass in Python?’.

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