A subclass of dict that looks for attributes if the key lookup fails.

gistfile1.py

class MyDict(dict):
  def get(self, key):
    return self.get_key_or_attr(key)

  def __getitem__(self, key):
    return self.get_key_or_attr(key)

  def get_key_or_attr(self, key):
    if self.has_key(key):
      return dict.__getitem__(self, key)
    else:
      return self.__getattribute__(key)

  @property
  def name(self):
    return "%s %s" % (self.get("first_name"), self.get("last_name"))

d = MyDict({"first_name": "James", "last_name": "Bond"})
print d["name"]
print d.get("name")