[Closed] accessing edit mesh modifier methods

Hi,
I’m looking for a way to do some mesh operations inside an ‘edit_mesh’ modifier
(not on the base object). To be more specific I was trying to set the material ID of a couple of faces. something like this

setFaceMatID $.edit_mesh 1 2

For some reason this didn’t work out and so did:

setFaceMatID $.edit_mesh.mesh 1 2

Can someone point me in the right direction?