getattr and setattr on nested subobjects / chained properties?

You could use functools.reduce:

import functools

def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
    pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
    return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)

# using wonder's beautiful simplification: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31174295/getattr-and-setattr-on-nested-objects/31174427?noredirect=1#comment86638618_31174427

def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
    def _getattr(obj, attr):
        return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
    return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))

rgetattr and rsetattr are drop-in replacements for getattr and setattr, which can also handle dotted attr strings.

---

import functools

class Person(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.pet = Pet()
        self.residence = Residence()

class Pet(object):
    def __init__(self,name='Fido',species='Dog'):
        self.name = name
        self.species = species

class Residence(object):
    def __init__(self,type='House',sqft=None):
        self.type = type
        self.sqft=sqft

def rsetattr(obj, attr, val):
    pre, _, post = attr.rpartition('.')
    return setattr(rgetattr(obj, pre) if pre else obj, post, val)

def rgetattr(obj, attr, *args):
    def _getattr(obj, attr):
        return getattr(obj, attr, *args)
    return functools.reduce(_getattr, [obj] + attr.split('.'))

---

if __name__=='__main__':
    p = Person()
    print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color', 'calico'))
    # 'calico'

    try:
        # Without a default argument, `rgetattr`, like `getattr`, raises
        # AttributeError when the dotted attribute is missing
        print(rgetattr(p, 'pet.favorite.color'))
    except AttributeError as err:
        print(err)
        # 'Pet' object has no attribute 'favorite'

    rsetattr(p, 'pet.name', 'Sparky')
    rsetattr(p, 'residence.type', 'Apartment')
    print(p.__dict__)
    print(p.pet.name)
    # Sparky
    print(p.residence.type)
    # Apartment

For one parent and one child:

if __name__=='__main__':
    p = Person()

    parent, child = 'pet.name'.split('.')
    setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')

    parent, child = 'residence.type'.split('.')
    setattr(getattr(p, parent), child, 'Sparky')

    print p.__dict__

This is simpler than the other answers for this particular use case.

For an out of the box solution, you can use operator.attrgetter:

from operator import attrgetter
attrgetter(dotted_path)(obj)