From 3bbad369984020f7900e729191e0a04a8582270f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Pablo Hoffman <pablo@pablohoffman.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:00:31 -0300
Subject: [PATCH] Raise when trying to set an item field value using setattr
 api, and added tests.

---
 scrapy/item.py            |  8 +++++++-
 scrapy/tests/test_item.py | 14 ++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/scrapy/item.py b/scrapy/item.py
index bfa05774a..fa15738b4 100644
--- a/scrapy/item.py
+++ b/scrapy/item.py
@@ -65,9 +65,15 @@ class DictItem(DictMixin, BaseItem):
 
     def __getattr__(self, name):
         if name in self.fields:
-            raise AttributeError("Use [%r] to access item field value" % name)
+            raise AttributeError("Use item[%r] to get field value" % name)
         raise AttributeError(name)
 
+    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
+        if not name.startswith('_'):
+            raise AttributeError("Use item[%r] = %r to set field value" % \
+                (name, value))
+        super(DictItem, self).__setattr__(name, value)
+
     def keys(self):
         return self._values.keys()
 
diff --git a/scrapy/tests/test_item.py b/scrapy/tests/test_item.py
index 2f51395bd..250a56335 100644
--- a/scrapy/tests/test_item.py
+++ b/scrapy/tests/test_item.py
@@ -71,6 +71,20 @@ class ItemTest(unittest.TestCase):
         i._private = 'test'
         self.assertEqual(i._private, 'test')
 
+    def test_raise_getattr(self):
+        class TestItem(Item):
+            name = Field()
+
+        i = TestItem()
+        self.assertRaises(AttributeError, getattr, i, 'name')
+
+    def test_raise_setattr(self):
+        class TestItem(Item):
+            name = Field()
+
+        i = TestItem()
+        self.assertRaises(AttributeError, setattr, i, 'name', 'john')
+
     def test_custom_methods(self):
         class TestItem(Item):
             name = Field()