Create instances from list of classes - python-3.x

Question

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 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>