I have the following block:
class Bank:
def __init__(self, b):
self.__bal = b
def main():
myaccount = Bank(2500)
myaccount.__bal = 8000
print(myaccount.__bal)
main()
and PyCharm prints: 8000.
I want to ask how is it possible to change a private var __bal outside the class?
You're not doing what you think you're doing.
Prefixing an attribute with double underscores performs "name mangling". You're just assigning a value to a new attribute. Observe:
class Bank:
def __init__(self, b):
self.__bal = b
def show_bal(self):
print(self.__bal)
And now, in interactive mode:
>>> b = Bank(23)
>>> b.__bal = 42
>>> b.show_bal()
23
Before you assign something to b.__bal you will also notice that accessing b.__bal doesn't work — because it doesn't exist yet. The actual value is still accessible, but its name is "hidden". Nothing prevents you from overriding "private" attributes (a concept that doesn't really exist in Python):
>>> b._Bank__bal = 99
>>> b.show_bal()
99
If you want to protect an attribute from change, the best way to do that is via properties, but even they will only protect the public interface of your class.
Let me tell you one thing about Python 3.
All members in a Python class are public by default. Any member can be accessed from outside the class environment.
Hence you can make changes to the variable. For more information about Python 3 class access modifiers, go here. Hope it clarifies your doubt.
Related
I want to get the type hints for an object's attributes. I can only get the hints for the class and not an instance of it.
I have tried using foo_instance.__class__ from here but that only shows the class variables.
So in the example how do I get the type hint of bar?
class foo:
var: int = 42
def __init__(self):
self.bar: int = 2
print(get_type_hints(foo)) # returns {'var': <class 'int'>}
I just had the same problem. The python doc isn't that clear since the example is made with what is now officially called dataclass.
Student(NamedTuple):
name: Annotated[str, 'some marker']
get_type_hints(Student) == {'name': str}
get_type_hints(Student, include_extras=False) == {'name': str}
get_type_hints(Student, include_extras=True) == {
'name': Annotated[str, 'some marker']
}
It give the impression that get_type_hints() works on class directly. Turns out get_type_hints() returns hints based on functions, not on class. That way it can be use with both if we know that. A normal class obviously not being instantiated at it's declaration, it does not have any of the variables set within the __init__() method who hasn't yet been called. It couldn't be that way either if we want the possibility to get the type hints from class-wide variables.
So you could either call it on __init__(), that is if variables are passed in arguments though (yes i seen it's not in your example but might help others since i didn't seen this anywhere in hours of search);
class foo:
var: int = 42
def __init__(self, bar: int = 2):
self.bar = int
print(get_type_hints(foo.__init__))
At last for your exact example i believe you have two choices. You could instantiate a temporary object and use del to clean it right after if your logic allows it. Or declare your variables as class ones with or without default values so you can get them with get_type_hints() and assign them later in instantiations.
Maybe this is a hack, and you have to be the creator of your instances, but there are a subset of cases in which using a data class will get you what you want;
Python 3.7+
#dataclass
class Foo:
bar: str = 2
if __name__ == '__main__':
f = Foo()
print(f.bar)
print(get_type_hints(f))
2
{'bar': <class 'str'>}
Hints only exist at the class level — by the time an instance is created the type of its attributes will be that of whatever value has been assigned to them. You can get the type of any instance attribute by using the first form of the built-in type() function — e.g. type(foo_instance.var).
This information isn't evaluated and only exists in the source code.
if you must get this information, you can use the ast module and extract the information from the source code yourself, if you have access to the source code.
You should also ask yourself if you need this information because in most cases reevaluating the source code will be to much effort.
List item
class Car:
def __init__(self, color, brand, number_of_seats):
self.color = color
self.brand = brand
self.number_of_seats = number_of_seats
self.number_of_wheels = 4
self.registration_number = GenerateRegistrationNumber()
Hi all,
1)Referring to the above example, could anyone tell me what is the difference between specific attributed and "the other" attributes? What will happen if registration_number is treated as a specific attribute?
2)
class MyInteger:
def __init__(self, newvalue):
# imagine self as an index card.
# under the heading of "value", we will write
# the contents of the variable newvalue.
self.value = newvalue
If we consider this example, shouldn't it be self.newvalue = newvalue?
I think I know what you're asking (let me know if I'm wrong), but I think you're asking what the difference is between the attributes that are assigned by the parameters of __init__ (Instance Attributes), ones that are assigned inside the __init__ method but not with parameters (also Instance Attributes), and ones that are not assigned in the initialiser at all (Class Attributes). The difference here is that all (well, pretty much all) cars have 4 wheels, and the number plate is generated, not supplied. You could also do this, for example:
class Car:
number_of_wheels = 4
def __init__(self, color, brand, number_of_seats):
self.color = color
self.brand = brand
self.number_of_seats = number_of_seats
self.registration_number = GenerateRegistrationNumber()
As the number of wheels here is always assigned to the same value, across all instances, it is said to be a "Class Attribute" in this case. All other attributes here are “Instance Attributes” as they are specifically assigned to each instance. For a slightly better explanation, I recommend reading this:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/class-instance-attributes-python/
It doesn't actually matter what the instance attribute (self.value here) is called, you could call it whatever you want and it'd still work, but in most cases, you would indeed want to name the attribute the same as the parameter.
init function also called as magic function is a constructor function for a class. if you remember in java whenever we make a class the constructor method should have the same name as the classname but this is not the scenario in python . In python we make use of the init method
the difference between the class attributes and instance attributes is that the class attributes are common to every object that is created but the instance attributes are only accessible by the object that is created.
consider a example where data of students in a class is stored. In such case the class division will be same for all the students of that particular class so it can be common but names of all students are different and also their marks and so on and hence they should be different for everyone
in previous scenario the class division can be class attribute and the data of student like name , marks has to be instance attributes
examples of class attribute is as shown
class A:
Division = 5A
here the division is a class attribute
class B:
def __init__(self,name,marks):
self.name = name
self.marks = marks
here the name and marks are instance variables
now here we can also write self.username = name because we are storing the value of name variable in self.username so you can write any name there is no constraint on that
Also whenever you write __ in front of method or variable it means that the attribute is private and accessible by only class.
I have a generic function for which I would like the name to change based on the value of predefined variable. Not sure this is possible in Python:
n = 'abc'
def f{n}(x):
print(x)
f{n}(3)
In the above, the function name will end up becoming "fabc"?
It is possible using a code-generation + exec pattern. It is also possible by instantiating a types.FunctionType instance directly. But a much simpler solution would be to leave the generic name, and then inject an alias (another reference to the same function object) for the dynamic name into whichever namespace you want.
>>> def generic_function(x):
... print(x ** 2)
...
>>> dynamic_name = "func_abc"
>>> globals()[dynamic_name] = generic_function
>>> func_abc(3)
9
To inject in some other module namespace that would be a setattr call:
setattr(other_mod, dynamic_name, generic_function)
You could also rewrite the function's __name__ attribute if you wanted to, but there's probably not much point.
You could do it with something like the below:
def f(n):
exec(f"def f{n}(x): print(x)")
return eval(f"f{n}")
I'm wondering if I have:
class A(object):
def __init__(self):
self.attribute = 1
self._member = 2
def _get_member(self):
return self._member
def _set_member(self, member):
self._member = member
member = property(_get_member, _set_member)
class B(object):
def __init__(self):
self._member = A()
def _get_a_member(self):
return self._member.member
def _set_a_member(self, member):
self._member.member = member
member = property(_get_a_member, _set_a_member)
Can I somehow avoid to write get/setters for A.member, and simply refer to the attribute or property of the A object?
Where the get/setters do logic, its of course needed, but if I simply wan't to expose the member/attributes of a member attribute, then writing get/setters seems like overhead.
I think even if I could write the get/setters inline that would help?
I find the question a bit unclear, however I try to explain some context.
Where the get/setters do logic, its of course needed, but if I simply wan't to expose the member/attributes of a member attribute
If there is no logic in getter/setters, then there is no need to define the attribute as a property, but the attribute can be used directly (in any context).
So
class A(object):
def __init__(self):
self.attribute = 1
self.member = 2
class B(object):
def __init__(self):
self.member = A()
B().member.member # returns 2
B().member.member = 10
In some languages, it's considered good practice to abstract instance properties with getter/setter methods, That's not necessarily the case in Python.
Python properties are useful when you'd need more control over the attribute, for example:
when there is logic (validation, etc.)
to define a readonly attribute (so only providing a getter without a setter)
Update (after the comment)
properties are not necessarily a tool to "hide" some internal implementation. Hiding in Python is a bit different than say in Java, due to very dynamic nature of Python language. It's always possible to introspect and even change objects on the fly, you can add new attributes (even methods) to objects on runtime:
b = B()
b.foo = 4 # define a new attribute on runtime
b.foo # returns 4
So Python developers rely more on conventions to hint their intentions of abstractions.
About the polymorphic members, I think it's most natural for Python classes to just share an interface, that's what's meant by Duck typing. So as long as your next implementation of A supports the same interface (provides the same methods for callers), it should not be any issue to change its implementation.
So this is what I came up with - use a method to generate the properties, with the assumption that the obj has an attribute of _member:
def generate_cls_a_property(name):
"""Small helper method for generating a 'dumb' property for the A object"""
def getter(obj):
return getattr(obj._member, name)
def setter(obj, new_value):
setattr(obj._member, name, new_value)
return property(getter, setter)
This allows me to add properties like so:
class B(object):
def __init__(self):
self._member = A()
member = generate_cls_a_property('member') # generates a dumb/pass-through property
I'll accept my own, unless someone tops it within a week.. :)
How do I create instances of classes from a list of classes? I've looked at other SO answers but did understand them.
I have a list of classes:
list_of_classes = [Class1, Class2]
Now I want to create instances of those classes, where the variable name storing the class is the name of the class. I have tried:
for cls in list_of_classes:
str(cls) = cls()
but get the error: "SyntaxError: can't assign to function call". Which is of course obvious, but I don't know what to do else.
I really want to be able to access the class by name later on. Let's say we store all the instance in a dict and that one of the classes are called ClassA, then I would like to be able to access the instance by dict['ClassA'] later on. Is that possible? Is there a better way?
You say that you want "the variable name storing the class [to be] the name of the class", but that's a very bad idea. Variable names are not data. The names are for programmers to use, so there's seldom a good reason to generate them using code.
Instead, you should probably populate a list of instances, or if you are sure that you want to index by class name, use a dictionary mapping names to instances.
I suggest something like:
list_of_instances = [cls() for cls in list_of_classes]
Or this:
class_name_to_instance_mapping = {cls.__name__: cls() for cls in list_of_classes}
One of the rare cases where it can sometimes make sense to automatically generate variables is when you're writing code to create or manipulate class objects themselves (e.g. producing methods automatically). This is somewhat easier and less fraught than creating global variables, since at least the programmatically produced names will be contained within the class namespace rather than polluting the global namespace.
The collections.NamedTuple class factory from the standard library, for example, creates tuple subclasses on demand, with special descriptors as attributes that allow the tuple's values to be accessed by name. Here's a very crude example of how you could do something vaguely similar yourself, using getattr and setattr to manipulate attributes on the fly:
def my_named_tuple(attribute_names):
class Tup:
def __init__(self, *args):
if len(args) != len(attribute_names):
raise ValueError("Wrong number of arguments")
for name, value in zip(attribute_names, args):
setattr(self, name, value) # this programmatically sets attributes by name!
def __iter__(self):
for name in attribute_names:
yield getattr(self, name) # you can look up attributes by name too
def __getitem__(self, index):
name = attribute_names[index]
if isinstance(index, slice):
return tuple(getattr(self, n) for n in name)
return getattr(self, name)
return Tup
It works like this:
>>> T = my_named_tuple(['foo', 'bar'])
>>> i = T(1, 2)
>>> i.foo
1
>>> i.bar
2
If i did understood your question correctly, i think you can do something like this using globals():
class A:
pass
class B:
pass
class C:
pass
def create_new_instances(classes):
for cls in classes:
name = '{}__'.format(cls.__name__)
obj = cls()
obj.__class__.__name__ = name
globals()[name] = obj
if __name__ == '__main__':
classes = [A, B, C]
create_new_instances(classes)
classes_new = [globals()[k] for k in globals() if k.endswith('__') and not k.startswith('__')]
for cls in classes_new:
print(cls.__class__.__name__, repr(cls))
Output (you'll get a similar ouput):
A__ <__main__.A object at 0x7f7fac6905c0>
C__ <__main__.C object at 0x7f7fac6906a0>
B__ <__main__.B object at 0x7f7fac690630>