#A class called "objectAttr" that works with MEL to create, change, and show a dictionary of a Maya node's attributes

#imports Maya and MEL commands
import maya.cmds as mc
import maya.mel as mel

#creates the class
class objectAttr:
    #global variable creation
	global attrDict
    attrDict = {}

    global attrNames
    attrNames = []

    global attrValues
    attrValues = []

	#Because MEL outputs everything to lists, these two work together to output the first selected object's name to a string
    global    selected
    selected = mc.ls(sl = 1)

    global sel
    sel = selected[0]

    def create(self):
		#Defines the list of attribute names taht are visible, readable, writable, and keyable
        attrNames = mc.listAttr(v=1,r=1,w=1,k=1)
        
		#For each of the objects in attrNames, append the list attrValues with the value associated with the attribute name
		for x in attrNames:
			#this tempSring is used to generate arguements of the type Maya expects
            tempString = (sel + "." + x)
            attrValues.append(mc.getAttr(tempString))
        
		#Appends the dictionary with each matching pair of name and value from the two above lists. Uses "z" to 
		z = 0
        while z < (len(attrNames)):
            attrDict[attrNames[z]] = attrValues[z]
            z += 1
        return attrDict
	
	#based on the user's input, changes the associated values on the Maya node, then calls the "create" method to repopulate the dictionary
    def chVal(self,attrName,attrValue):

        tempString = (sel + "." + attrName)
        mc.setAttr(tempString,attrValue)
        self.create()
        self.shVal()

    def shVal(self):
        print attrDict