Simple but useful

DictAsMember.py

class DictAsMember(dict):
     def __getattr__(self, name):
         """
            From : http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__getattr__
            Called when an attribute lookup has not found the attribute in the usual places
            (i.e. it is not an instance attribute nor is it found in the class tree for self). 
            name is the attribute name
            http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8709975/overwrite-in-python
         """    
         value = self[name]
         if isinstance(value, dict):
             value = DictAsMember(value)
         return value

>>> my = DictAsMember()
>>> my["item"] = 3
>>> my.item
3
>>> my["item"]
3