René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"DISCUSSION: Are setter methods which clone and return object type confusing to end-users?","articleBody":"Methods like [`datastore.key.Key.dataset`](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcloud-python/blob/b97ce739519c69dc98c2fcab4d52783defa43c62/gcloud/datastore/key.py#L97) act as both setters and getters and return a different type of object depending on whether they set or get.\n\nIn this case `key.dataset(dataset=NEW_DATASET)` returns a new clone `Key` object (to keep the instances immutable, as @tseaver pointed out was discussed in #3) where `key.dataset()` simply returns a `datastore.dataset.Dataset` object.\n\nFor me (@dhermes) it's really a method which is somewhat overloaded in it's scope (though I'll acknowledge the code is typically short).\n\nI'd be much more in favor of two separate methods for getting and setting, i.e.\n`update_dataset` as a method and `dataset` decorated with `@property` as a getter only.\n\n``` python\ncurr_dataset = key.dataset  # Actually a getter.\nnew_key = key.update_dataset(dataset=NEW_DATASET)\n```\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/dhermes","@type":"Person","name":"dhermes"},"datePublished":"2014-09-25T18:29:40.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":2},"url":"https://github.com/188/google-cloud-python/issues/188"}