python - Overriding dict.update() method in subclass to prevent overwriting dict keys

Question

Earlier today, I read the question "Raise error if python dict comprehension overwrites a key" and decided to try my hand at an answer. The method that naturally occurred to me was to subclass dict for this. However, I got stuck on my answer, and now I'm obsessed with getting this worked out for myself.

Notes:

• No - I do not plan on turning in the answer to this question as an answer to the other question.
• This is purely an intellectual exercise for me at this point. As a practical matter, I would almost certainly use a namedtuple or a regular dictionary wherever I have a requirement for something like this.

My (not quite working) Solution:

class DuplicateKeyError(KeyError):
    pass



class UniqueKeyDict(dict):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.update(*args, **kwargs)


    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        if key in self:  # Validate key doesn't already exist.
            raise DuplicateKeyError('Key '{}' already exists with value '{}'.'.format(key, self[key]))
        super().__setitem__(key, value)


    def update(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if args:
            if len(args) > 1:
                raise TypeError('Update expected at most 1 arg.  Got {}.'.format(len(args)))
            else:
                try:
                    for k, v in args[0]:
                        self.__setitem__(k, v)
                except ValueError:
                    pass

        for k in kwargs:
            self.__setitem__(k, kwargs[k])

My Tests and Expected Results

>>> ukd = UniqueKeyDict((k, int(v)) for k, v in ('a1', 'b2', 'c3', 'd4'))  # Should succeed.
>>> ukd['e'] = 5  # Should succeed.
>>> print(ukd)
{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, d: 4, 'e': 5}
>>> ukd['a'] = 5  # Should fail.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 8, in __setitem__
__main__.DuplicateKeyError: Key 'a' already exists with value '1'.
>>> ukd.update({'a': 5})  # Should fail.
>>> ukd = UniqueKeyDict((k, v) for k, v in ('a1', 'b2', 'c3', 'd4', 'a5'))  # Should fail.
>>>

I'm certain the issue is in my update() method, but I'm not able to determine just what I'm doing wrong.

Below is the original version of my update() method. This version fails as expected on duplicates when calling my_dict.update({k: v}) for a key/value pair already in the dict, but does not fail when including a duplicate key while creating the original dict, due to the fact that converting the args to a dict results in default behavior for a dictionary, i.e., overwriting the duplicate key.

def update(self, *args, **kwargs):
    for k, v in dict(*args, **kwargs).items():
        self.__setitem__(k, v)

Answer 1

It's interesting that simply overriding __setitem__ is not enough to change the behavior of update in dict. I would have expected that dict would use its __setitem__ method when it's being updated using update. In all cases, I think it's better to implement collections.MutableMapping to achieve the desired result without touching update:

import collections

class UniqueKeyDict(collections.MutableMapping, dict):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self._dict = dict(*args, **kwargs)

    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return self._dict[key]

    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        if key in self:
            raise DuplicateKeyError("Key '{}' already exists with value '{}'.".format(key, self[key]))
        self._dict[key] = value

    def __delitem__(self, key):
        del self._dict[key]

    def __iter__(self):
        return iter(self._dict)

    def __len__(self):
        return len(self._dict)

Edit: included dict as base class to satisfy the isinstance(x, dict) check.