I don't think you need to use metaclasses, you can just define the relevant magic methods, something like: class JSLikeObject(dict): __getattr__ =

I don't think you need to use metaclasses, you can just define the relevant magic methods, something like: class JSLikeObject(dict): __getattr__ = dict.__getitem__ __setattr__ = dict.__setitem__ ETA: That gets you JavaScript-style equivalence between attribute and index lookup, but it doesn't get you JavaScript-like binding of "this". I think you could probably do that with descriptors (and maybe it would require writing a metaclass).