In this Python program, I created an Employee class which has a protected instance attribute, '_id'. It is my understanding that in Python, to create a protected attribute, you start the name with a single underscore. However, it is allowing me to access this protected attribute outside of the class. The output of this program is:
12345
Why is it doing this?
class Employee:
def __init__(self, full_name, ID = 0):
self._firstname, self._lastname = full_name.split(" ")
self._id = ID
#property
def firstname(self):
return self._firstname
#property
def id(self):
return self._id
#firstname.setter
def firstname(self, new):
self._firstname = new
#id.setter
def id(self, new):
self._id = new
#firstname.deleter
def firstname(self):
self._firstname = None
#id.deleter
def id(self):
_id = None
bob = Employee("Billy Bob", 12345)
print(bob._id)
Thank you. I understand now that the underscores are simply convention. I was confused to thinking that access modifiers existed because when I used the convention for a private attribute, '__', it wouldn't let me access the attribute externally. The reason it wouldn't let me access it was because of name mangling.
Related
I'm trying to create a Class with a list of fields. See code below.
class Character:
# Private Fields:
__age = 18
__weight = 200
__height = 72
def __init__(self, name):
self.__name = name
#property
def get_age(self):
return self.__age
#property
def get_name(self):
return self.__name
#property
def get_weight(self):
return self.__weight
#property
def get_height(self):
return self.__height
person = Character("someone")
print("name =", person.get_name,",", "age =", person.get_age)
Is there a way to avoid writing the #property for every private field you want to access? For instance is there a way to pass an attribute into a more general getter function like:
def get_attr(self,attr):
#set attr to __attr
#return self.attr
I tried using the join function, but it didn't work
Thanks for any help
To answer the question as asked, the simple solution is to compensate for the name mangling that is done with private members. e.g. to get the __age attribute you'd use: person._Character__age
But, this would be a terrible idea and I wouldn't recommend it. If you need them to be easily accessible, just remove the underscores. If they really need to be private, they shouldn't be easily accessible from outside the class anyway, so putting in a way to make them accessible defeats the purpose.
I was trying to set some property to a class via decorator but its not working as expected. How can I get the age via property decorator.
class Person:
def __init__(self):
self.name = ""
self.age = ""
self.dob = ""
#property
def name(self):
return self._name
#name.setter
def name(self, value):
self._name = value
#property
def age(self):
return self._age
#age.setter
def age(self, value):
self._age = value
#property
def dob(self):
return self._dob
#dob.setter
def dob(self, value):
self._dob = value
self._age = 20 #Utility.getAge(value)
if __name__ == '__main__':
p = Person()
p.name = "Andrew"
p.dob = "10-10-1980"
print p.name
print p.dob
print p.age
Output:
John
10-10-1980
#20 <-missing
I am not getting the age. Am I missing something?
Ok, this took me a while to actually find out why the above code was not working in python 2.7.
If you look at the property documentation for python2.7, you would find that the class that has the property decorators used is actually inheriting object class and your code doesn't.
Now, when you don't inherit, the property decorator actually doesn't work and setting or getting properties don't work either
(Put a print statements in getter or setter functions and they wont be printed since they were never invoked while setting p.name or getting p.name).
Question : So how come get/set for p.name and p.dob works?
Since, you are not inheriting object class in your class, the property decorators are useless, they are not being invoked but have created those property on the Person object.
But, when you use below code, you are explicitly setting those value (without the use of setters), hence thy are printed and p.age never got assigned any value.
p.name = "Andrew"
p.dob = "10-10-1980"
Code Fix : Update your class declaration to -->
class Person(object):
and setters/getters would work (check using print statements) and self.age would also work.
Bonus : Python3 onwards, all classes, by default, inherit object class.
I need to change a inherited class to another inherited class where only one of the attributes has changed
i need to "Promote" a Cashier to a Manager, the only thing that is suppose to change is the salary
both Cashier and Manager are inherited classes of Employee (where I'm not sure if I'm using the "hasattr" function the right way)
class Employee:
def __init__(self,name):
self.name=name
if(hasattr(self,'shifts')==False):
self.shifts=[]
class Manager(Employee):
def __init__(self,name,salary):
Employee.__init__(self,name)
self.salary=salary
class Cashier(Employee):
def __init__(self,name,salarey_per_hours):
Employee.__init__(self,name)
self.salery_per_hours=salarey_per_hours
def promote(self,salary):
return Manager(self.name,salary)
P.s It's my first time uploading a question
What you could do is create the addition method of your class and add self to the manager class you are returning like so:
class Employee(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.name=name
if not hasattr(self, 'shifts'):
self.shifts = []
def __add__(self, other):
if isinstance(other, Employee):
for key, value in other.__dict__.items():
if key == 'salary':
continue
self.__setattr__(key, value)
return self
class Manager(Employee):
def __init__(self, name, salary):
super().__init__(name)
self.salary = salary
class Cashier(Employee):
def __init__(self,name,salary):
super().__init__(name)
self.salary = salary
def promote(self, salary):
manager = Manager(self.name, salary)
manager += self
return manager
cashier = Cashier('hank', 22)
cashier.shifts = [1, 2, 3, 4]
print(cashier.shifts)
promoted_cashier = cashier.promote(30)
print(promoted_cashier.shifts)
Here you make sure that everything except the "salary" is transferred to the promoted class. And since both the Manager and the Cashier are an Employee this should work nicely. I changed your code a bit to what I'm used to since there was some unusual coding with you Calling Employee in the init which I assumed you did not explicitly needed. Sorry if that was not the case.
You can change the object's class by obj.__class__ to the another class by
doing obj.__class__ = SomeClass
Beware that is can lead to strange behaviours if it is handled incorrectly.
by modifying your code
class Employee:
def __init__(self,name):
self.name=name
if(hasattr(self,'shifts')==False):
self.shifts=[]
class Manager(Employee):
def __init__(self,name,salary):
Employee.__init__(self,name)
self.salary=salary
class Cashier(Employee):
def __init__(self,name,salarey_per_hours):
Employee.__init__(self,name)
self.salery_per_hours=salarey_per_hours
def promote(self,salary):
self.__class__ = Manager
# return Manager(self.name,salary)
You can also take a look at this post changing the class of a python object (casting)
I am try to reference an object variable inside the class without passing it in parameters but it is throwing error
class Sample:
def __init__(self):
v = []
v.append(name)
v.append(email)
s = Sample()
s.name = "xxxx"
s.email = "ss#ss.com"
print s.v
error:
NameError: global name 'name' is not defined
I am assigning the variable name in the object now how can i call it inside the class without adding parameters to function
if you absolutely must avoid attributes:
class Sample:
def __init__(self):
self.v = []
def addName(self, name):
self.v.append(name)
def addEmail(self, email):
self.v.append(email)
s = Sample()
s.addName("xxxx")
s.addEmail("abc#def.com")
print(s.v)
Yet another way to do this is to use decorators and #property:
class Sample(object):
def __init__(self):
self.v = [None, None]
#property
def name(self):
return self.v[0]
#property
def email(self):
return self.v[1]
#name.setter
def name(self, value):
self.v[0] = value
#email.setter
def email(self, value):
self.v[1] = value
s = Sample()
s.name = "xxxx"
s.email = "ss#ss.com"
print s.v
Notes:
Your class must be extending object explicitly in python 2 for this to work
#property decorated methods are working as "getters" and return a value
#<name>.setter is a setter method responsible for setting <name> member, so #email.setter sets the email and is being invoked when x.email = ... is called
The above may be a bit long-winded but allows for a clean API which hides the details from the user... Some people do prefer to add get/set_name methods to be more explicit but the above is more pythonic
If your requirements are dynamic, you can create attributes at run time like,
class Sample:
pass
s = Sample()
setattr(s,"name","chanda")
setattr(s,"email","xyz#gmail.com")
setattr(s,"v",[s.name,s.email])
print(s.name) #chanda
print(s.email) #xyz#gmail.com
print(s.v) #['chanda', 'xyz#gmail.com']
print(s.__dict__) #{'email': 'xyz#gmail.com', 'v': ['chanda', 'xyz#gmail.com'], 'name': 'chanda'}
I am trying to print a string variable returned by name() function, which in this case should print "Jim, but Python is printing
`<bound method Human.name of <__main__.Human object at 0x7f9a18e2aed0>>`
Below is the code.
class Human:
def __init__(self):
name = None
def setName(self, _name):
name = _name
def name(self):
return self.name
jim = Human()
jim.setName("Jim")
print(jim.name())
UPDATE:
After reading the answers, i updated the code as shown below, but, now i am getting a new error TypeError: 'str' object is not callable
class Human:
def __init__(self):
self.name = None
def setName(self, _name):
self.name = _name
def name(self):
return self.name
jim = Human()
jim.setName("Jim")
print(jim.name())
self.name is the method itself. You have no attributes storing the name. Nowhere do you actually set the name as an attribute. The following works:
class Human:
def __init__(self):
self.name = None
def setName(self, _name):
self.name = _name
# NOTE: There is no more name method here!
Now you have an actual attribute, and you don't need to call the method here:
jim = Human()
jim.setName("Jim")
print(jim.name) # directly using the attribute
You could even just set the attribute directly:
jim = Human()
jim.name = "Jim"
print(jim.name)
Alternatively, use self._name to store the name on the instance:
class Human:
_name = None
def setName(self, _name):
self._name = _name
def name(self):
return self._name
Here we used a class attribute Human._name as a default, and only set self._name on the instance in the Human.setName() method.
The problem is that name is the name of the internal variable in your object and also the name of the method.
The namespace for variables and methods is the same. Change the name of your method to something other than name. This will fix your getter. On first glance I thought that that would be all you have to do, but the recommendation in Martijn's answer also applies -- you need to assign to self.name and not just name in order to get your setter to work as well.
As an aside, this getter/setter pattern is not usually appropriate for Python. You should ask yourself why you want to use a getter/setter pattern over simply accessing the object's variable directly. See the section on getters and setters in this article for more detail.
You can use setter and getter properties instead of your custom defined methods.
class Human():
def __init__(self):
self._name = None
#property
def name(self):
return self._name
#name.setter
def name(self, name):
self._name = name
And then, use them:
jim = Human()
jim.name = "Jim"
print(jim.name)