I have a particular case where using compound dictionary keys would make a task easier. I have a working solution, but feel it is inelegant. How would you do it?

context = {
    'database': {
        'port': 9990,
        'users': ['number2', 'dr_evil']
    },
    'admins': ['[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
    'domain.name': 'virtucon.com'
}

def getitem(key, context):
    if hasattr(key, 'upper') and key in context:
        return context[key]

    keys = key if hasattr(key, 'pop') else key.split('.')

    k = keys.pop(0)
    if keys:
        try:
            return getitem(keys, context[k])
        except KeyError, e:
            raise KeyError(key)
    if hasattr(context, 'count'):
        k = int(k)
    return context[k]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print getitem('database', context)
    print getitem('database.port', context)
    print getitem('database.users.0', context)
    print getitem('admins', context)
    print getitem('domain.name', context)
    try:
        getitem('database.nosuchkey', context)
    except KeyError, e:
        print "Error:", e

Thanks.