In most cases I prefer dot notation over bracket notation for dictionary access. That is, I prefer mydictionary.myfield over mydictionary\['myflield'\]. I also prefer attempted access to undefined keys to return None instead of raising an exception.

With the help of this thread, this is what I've been using:

class dotdict(dict):
    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        return self.get(attr, None)
    __setattr__= dict.__setitem__
    __delattr__= dict.__delitem__

>>> dd = dotdict()
>>> dd.a
>>> dd.a = 'one'
>>> dd.a
'one'
>>> dd.keys()
['a']

>>> existing = {'a':'A', 'b':'B'}
>>> dot_existing = dotdict(existing)
>>> dot_existing.a
'A'