frozendict

Ever want to use a mapping as a key in a dict or an element in a set? Me too. Unfortunately, Python doesn't have a built-in mapping type that satisfies this requirement. Fortunately, it's simple to do it:

try:
    frozenset
except NameError:
    from sets import ImmutableSet as frozenset

class frozendict(dict):
    __slots__ = ('_hash',)
    def __hash__(self):
        rval = getattr(self, '_hash', None)
        if rval is None:
            rval = self._hash = hash(frozenset(self.iteritems()))
        return rval

This implementation is for consenting adults only. It's not actually immutable, so don't change it after you plan on needing it to be hashable.