Different search categories in a list

[nicehulk]

I'm doing a library for DVD-movies and I'm trying to figure out how to search different categories like director, title, actor etc. (which are all variables in a DVD-class).

Previously I did like this:

    def search(self):
        print '\nWhat do you wish to search for?\n'
        print ' 1. Search for Title.'
        print ' 2. Search for Year.'
        print ' 3. ...'

        choice = raw_input('\nMenu choice: ')
        
        if choice == '1':
            search_term = raw_input('\nSearch for a title: ')
            print '\nResult: \n'
            result = False
            for i in range (len(movies)):
                if search_term in movies[i].title:
                    print movies[i]
                    result = True
            if result == False:
                print 'No results found. \n'
            user_library.search()

        if choice == '2':
            search_term = raw_input('\nSearch for a year: ')
            print '\nResult: \n'
            result = False
            for i in range (len(movies)):
                if search_term in movies[i].year:
                    print movies[i]
                    result = True
            if result == False:
                print 'No results found. \n'
            user_library.search()

However, I want to avoid using the same code, and would rather have just one method. This is as far as I've gotten:

    def search_menu(self):
        print '\nWhat do you wish to search for?\n'
        print ' 1. Search for Title.'
        print ' 2. Search for Year.'
        print ' 3. ...'

        choice = raw_input('\nMenu chocie: ')
        
        if choice == '1':
            user_library.search('movies[i].title')

    def search(self, search_category):
        self.search_category = search_category
        search_term = raw_input('\nSearch: ')
        print '\nResult: \n'
        result = False
        for i in range (len(movies)):
            if search_term in search_category:
                print movies[i]
                result = True
        if result == False:
            print 'No results found. \n'
        user_library.search()

However, then it just searches through the 'movies[i].title' string and it also gives me

TypeError: search() takes exactly 2 arguments (1 given)

Does anyone have a fairly quick sollution to this? I really appreciate the help! Sorry if something similar has been posted, I couldn't find anything. If it has, please direct me there.

[bvdet]

Without seeing all your code, I am not sure what is going on.

In this line

        user_library.search()

it appears you are making a recursive call to search(), but you are not passing an argument. That would produce a TypeError.

I don't know what you mean by "However, then it just searches through the 'movies[i].title' string...".

[nicehulk]

user_library.se arch() simply points back to the search method so that you can search again (and is not really important for my question.

What I mean is that when I write this:

# if choice == '1':
#             user_library.search('movies[i].title')
#  
#     def search(self, search_category):
#         self.search_category = search_category
#         search_term = raw_input('\nSearch: ')
#         print '\nResult: \n'
#         result = False
#         for i in range (len(movies)):
#             if search_term in search_category:
#                 print movies[i]

Is that instead of searching for search_term in movies[i].title (thus all movie titles in the library) it searches through the string 'movies[i].title'. So if you search for "Die Hard" (which is in the library) you get no result, but if you search for "movies[i]title" you will gett all movies printed...

Hope you understand!

[bvdet]

I am going to assume that "movies" is a dictionary of dictionaries, not knowing the methods available in your DVD class. I would expect the code snippet to look something like this:

        if choice == '1':
            user_library.search('title')
 
    def search(self, search_category):
        self.search_category = search_category
        search_term = raw_input('\nSearch for %s: ' % search_category)
        for key in movies:
            if search_term in movies[key][search_category]:
                return movie[key]
        return False

where 'title' is a key in the subdictionary.

[Glenton]

Bvdet, movies is a class that nicehulk has defined, as far as I can figure out.

Nicehulk, a bit more code/explanation of how the class is structured would be infinitely helpful!

Looking at your first post, however, it seems that line 10 passes the "movie[i].title" string to the search function. This is why you're searching movie[i].title!

However, all is not lost! Python has the very powerful exec and eval functions, which can execute and evaluate strings. (warning: one needs to be careful with these functions and use them sparingly!)

But for example:

In [8]: mylist=range(10)
In [9]: command="mylist[i]"
In [10]: for i in range(len(mylist)):
   ....:     print command, eval(command)
   ....:     
   ....:     
mylist[i] 0
mylist[i] 1
mylist[i] 2
mylist[i] 3
mylist[i] 4
mylist[i] 5
mylist[i] 6
mylist[i] 7
mylist[i] 8
mylist[i] 9

should show you the difference.

In your case, replacing line 18

if search_term in search_category:

with

if search_term in eval(search_category)

will probably work.

[nicehulk]

Thank you very much for your assistance, I'm sorry that I didn't make things really clear. Your advice was exactly what was needed, thank you Glenton and thank you bvdet for trying even though you needed more code from me.

:)