Is it possible to write a decorator that acts upon a class's method and uses the class's attributes? For example, I would like to add a decorator to functions that will return an error if one of the class's attributes (which is set when the user calls the function) is False.
For example, my attempt (broken code since is_active can't access MyClass's methods):
def is_active(active):
if active == False:
raise Exception("ERROR: Class is inactive")
class MyClass():
def __init__(self, active):
self.active = active
#is_active
def foo(self, variable):
print("foo")
return variable
#is_active
def bar(self, variable):
print("bar")
return variable
where the expected behaviour is:
cls = MyClass(active=True)
cls.foo(42)
---> function prints "foo" and returns 42
cls = MyClass(active=False)
cls.foo(42)
---> function raises an exception as the active flag is False
The above is a dummy example and the actual use case is more complex, but hopefully this shows the problem I'm facing.
If the above is possible, my extra question is: is it possible to "hide"/delete the methods from the instantiated class based on this flag. For example, if the user instantiates the class with a active=False then when they're using iPython and press <tab>, they can only see the methods which are permitted to be used?
Thank you.
Decorators can be confusing. Note a function is passed as a parameter and the decorator expects that a function (or callable object) is returned. So you just need to return a different function. You have everything else you need since self is passed as the first argument to a class method. You just need to add a new function in your decorator that does what you want.
def is_active_method(func):
def new_func(*args, **kwargs):
self_arg = args[0] # First argument is the self
if not self_arg.active:
raise Exception("ERROR: Class is inactive")
return func(*args, **kwargs)
return new_func
class MyClass():
def __init__(self, active):
self.active = active
#is_active_method
def foo(self, variable):
print("foo")
return variable
#is_active_method
def bar(self, variable):
print("bar")
return variable
m = MyClass(True) # Prints foo from the method
m.foo(2)
m = MyClass(False) # Outputs the exception
m.foo(2)
when creating instance of a class, if wrong parameters are given. how do I NOT to create a new instance and return the reference, but instead just return a "None"
here is my application:
Because it is allowed sometime. My application is to build trees from a list of integers. I want to use None in the list to represent a leaf. so I just want to return a None instead of a empty tree node.
Most of these answers aren't right. The appropriate way to do this is to validate your arguments in the class's __new__ method, and return None if validation fails or ins if validation succeeds.
Here's what you're looking for:
import pytest # for testing
class ValidatedModel:
def __init__(self, *, name=None):
self.name = name
#classmethod
def _validate(cls, *args, **kwargs):
try:
assert not args
assert list(kwargs.keys()) == ['name']
assert len(kwargs['name']) > 5 and len(kwargs['name']) < 10
except AssertionError:
return False
return True
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if cls._validate(*args, **kwargs):
return super().__new__(cls)
class TestValidatedModel:
def test_success(self):
vm = ValidatedModel(name='william')
assert isinstance(vm, ValidatedModel)
def test_kwarg_fail_unexpected_kwarg(self):
vm = ValidatedModel(name='william', gender='M')
assert vm is None
def test_kwarg_fail_name_length_short(self):
vm = ValidatedModel(name='bill')
assert vm is None
def test_kwarg_fail_name_length_long(self):
vm = ValidatedModel(name='william johnson')
assert vm is None
def test_no_name_kwarg(self):
vm = ValidatedModel()
assert vm is None
Obviously you can replace the _validate method with your own implementation.
See this answer to Python __init__ return failure to create.
Basically, you can use __new__ to accomplish what you want, but really, the Pythonic way of doing this would be to throw an exception. Arguably, the Pythonic way would be to have a simpler __init__ method that is simply an initialization and not something that can fail at all.
If you want to set the object to None, I assume that in other places of your code, you are going to test for the object being None (before assuming it's a genuine Node). So maybe, a custom __nonzero__ method could do the trick (see this question), eg:
class MyNode():
def __init__(self, ...):
self.ok = False
if ...genuine node...:
self.ok = True
...
def __nonzero__(self):
return self.ok
node = MyNode(...)
if node:
...node code...
else:
...leaf code...
If the parameters are present create class instance else None Object
class Test:
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
pass
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if kwargs or args:
return super().__new__(cls)
In the init, in case of exception just put a return. That will do the trick.
class MyTest(object):
def __init__(self, * args, **kwargs):
try:
# Your code goes here
except:
print "No donuts buddy"
return
# An empty return will return a None
In case you wish to instantiate another class or any such advanced maneuvers, you need to write a __ new __ constructor in your class instead of doing it in the __ init __ constructor.
you can use the isinstance(object, class) function inside an if statment to check each parameter
for example:
if not isinstance(num, int):
return None
I've got a class which contains a number of lists where whenever something is added to one of the lists, I need to trigger a change to the instance's state. I've created a simple demonstration class below to try to demonstrate what I'm trying to do.
Suppose I have a class like this:
class MyClass:
added = False
def _decorator(self, f):
def func(item):
added = true
return f(item)
return func
def __init__(self):
self.list = [1, 2, 3]
self.list.append = self._decorator(self.list.append)
Since a list is built in, I cannot change it's .append method
cls = MyClass() #gives me an AttributeError since '.append' is readonly
Ideally, I could do the following:
cls = MyClass()
cls.list.append(4)
cls.added #would be true
How should I go about this? Would subclassing list allow me to change it's behavior in this way? If so, how would I pass in the class's state without changing the methods signature?
Thanks!
You cannot monkey-patch builtins, so subclassing is the only way (and actually better and cleaner IMHO). I'd go for something like this:
class CustomList(list):
def __init__(self, parent_instance, *args, **kwargs):
super(CustomList, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.parent_instance = parent_instance
def append(self, item):
self.parent_instance.added = True
super(CustomList, self).append(item)
class MyClass(object):
added = False
def __init__(self):
self.list = CustomList(self, [1,2,3])
c = MyClass()
print c.added # False
c.list.append(4)
print c.added # True
Would this suit your needs?
class MyClass(object):
added = False
def __init__(self):
self.list = [1,2,3]
def append(self, obj):
self.added = True
self.list.append(obj)
cls = MyClass()
cls.append(4)
cls.added #true
It might be helpful to know what exactly you're trying to achieve.
This question already has answers here:
Creating a singleton in Python
(38 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
There seem to be many ways to define singletons in Python. Is there a consensus opinion on Stack Overflow?
I don't really see the need, as a module with functions (and not a class) would serve well as a singleton. All its variables would be bound to the module, which could not be instantiated repeatedly anyway.
If you do wish to use a class, there is no way of creating private classes or private constructors in Python, so you can't protect against multiple instantiations, other than just via convention in use of your API. I would still just put methods in a module, and consider the module as the singleton.
Here's my own implementation of singletons. All you have to do is decorate the class; to get the singleton, you then have to use the Instance method. Here's an example:
#Singleton
class Foo:
def __init__(self):
print 'Foo created'
f = Foo() # Error, this isn't how you get the instance of a singleton
f = Foo.instance() # Good. Being explicit is in line with the Python Zen
g = Foo.instance() # Returns already created instance
print f is g # True
And here's the code:
class Singleton:
"""
A non-thread-safe helper class to ease implementing singletons.
This should be used as a decorator -- not a metaclass -- to the
class that should be a singleton.
The decorated class can define one `__init__` function that
takes only the `self` argument. Also, the decorated class cannot be
inherited from. Other than that, there are no restrictions that apply
to the decorated class.
To get the singleton instance, use the `instance` method. Trying
to use `__call__` will result in a `TypeError` being raised.
"""
def __init__(self, decorated):
self._decorated = decorated
def instance(self):
"""
Returns the singleton instance. Upon its first call, it creates a
new instance of the decorated class and calls its `__init__` method.
On all subsequent calls, the already created instance is returned.
"""
try:
return self._instance
except AttributeError:
self._instance = self._decorated()
return self._instance
def __call__(self):
raise TypeError('Singletons must be accessed through `instance()`.')
def __instancecheck__(self, inst):
return isinstance(inst, self._decorated)
You can override the __new__ method like this:
class Singleton(object):
_instance = None
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if not cls._instance:
cls._instance = super(Singleton, cls).__new__(
cls, *args, **kwargs)
return cls._instance
if __name__ == '__main__':
s1 = Singleton()
s2 = Singleton()
if (id(s1) == id(s2)):
print "Same"
else:
print "Different"
A slightly different approach to implement the singleton in Python is the borg pattern by Alex Martelli (Google employee and Python genius).
class Borg:
__shared_state = {}
def __init__(self):
self.__dict__ = self.__shared_state
So instead of forcing all instances to have the same identity, they share state.
The module approach works well. If I absolutely need a singleton I prefer the Metaclass approach.
class Singleton(type):
def __init__(cls, name, bases, dict):
super(Singleton, cls).__init__(name, bases, dict)
cls.instance = None
def __call__(cls,*args,**kw):
if cls.instance is None:
cls.instance = super(Singleton, cls).__call__(*args, **kw)
return cls.instance
class MyClass(object):
__metaclass__ = Singleton
See this implementation from PEP318, implementing the singleton pattern with a decorator:
def singleton(cls):
instances = {}
def getinstance():
if cls not in instances:
instances[cls] = cls()
return instances[cls]
return getinstance
#singleton
class MyClass:
...
The Python documentation does cover this:
class Singleton(object):
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwds):
it = cls.__dict__.get("__it__")
if it is not None:
return it
cls.__it__ = it = object.__new__(cls)
it.init(*args, **kwds)
return it
def init(self, *args, **kwds):
pass
I would probably rewrite it to look more like this:
class Singleton(object):
"""Use to create a singleton"""
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwds):
"""
>>> s = Singleton()
>>> p = Singleton()
>>> id(s) == id(p)
True
"""
it_id = "__it__"
# getattr will dip into base classes, so __dict__ must be used
it = cls.__dict__.get(it_id, None)
if it is not None:
return it
it = object.__new__(cls)
setattr(cls, it_id, it)
it.init(*args, **kwds)
return it
def init(self, *args, **kwds):
pass
class A(Singleton):
pass
class B(Singleton):
pass
class C(A):
pass
assert A() is A()
assert B() is B()
assert C() is C()
assert A() is not B()
assert C() is not B()
assert C() is not A()
It should be relatively clean to extend this:
class Bus(Singleton):
def init(self, label=None, *args, **kwds):
self.label = label
self.channels = [Channel("system"), Channel("app")]
...
As the accepted answer says, the most idiomatic way is to just use a module.
With that in mind, here's a proof of concept:
def singleton(cls):
obj = cls()
# Always return the same object
cls.__new__ = staticmethod(lambda cls: obj)
# Disable __init__
try:
del cls.__init__
except AttributeError:
pass
return cls
See the Python data model for more details on __new__.
Example:
#singleton
class Duck(object):
pass
if Duck() is Duck():
print "It works!"
else:
print "It doesn't work!"
Notes:
You have to use new-style classes (derive from object) for this.
The singleton is initialized when it is defined, rather than the first time it's used.
This is just a toy example. I've never actually used this in production code, and don't plan to.
I'm very unsure about this, but my project uses 'convention singletons' (not enforced singletons), that is, if I have a class called DataController, I define this in the same module:
_data_controller = None
def GetDataController():
global _data_controller
if _data_controller is None:
_data_controller = DataController()
return _data_controller
It is not elegant, since it's a full six lines. But all my singletons use this pattern, and it's at least very explicit (which is pythonic).
The one time I wrote a singleton in Python I used a class where all the member functions had the classmethod decorator.
class Foo:
x = 1
#classmethod
def increment(cls, y=1):
cls.x += y
Creating a singleton decorator (aka an annotation) is an elegant way if you want to decorate (annotate) classes going forward. Then you just put #singleton before your class definition.
def singleton(cls):
instances = {}
def getinstance():
if cls not in instances:
instances[cls] = cls()
return instances[cls]
return getinstance
#singleton
class MyClass:
...
There are also some interesting articles on the Google Testing blog, discussing why singleton are/may be bad and are an anti-pattern:
Singletons are Pathological Liars
Where Have All the Singletons Gone?
Root Cause of Singletons
I think that forcing a class or an instance to be a singleton is overkill. Personally, I like to define a normal instantiable class, a semi-private reference, and a simple factory function.
class NothingSpecial:
pass
_the_one_and_only = None
def TheOneAndOnly():
global _the_one_and_only
if not _the_one_and_only:
_the_one_and_only = NothingSpecial()
return _the_one_and_only
Or if there is no issue with instantiating when the module is first imported:
class NothingSpecial:
pass
THE_ONE_AND_ONLY = NothingSpecial()
That way you can write tests against fresh instances without side effects, and there is no need for sprinkling the module with global statements, and if needed you can derive variants in the future.
The Singleton Pattern implemented with Python courtesy of ActiveState.
It looks like the trick is to put the class that's supposed to only have one instance inside of another class.
class Singleton(object[,...]):
staticVar1 = None
staticVar2 = None
def __init__(self):
if self.__class__.staticVar1==None :
# create class instance variable for instantiation of class
# assign class instance variable values to class static variables
else:
# assign class static variable values to class instance variables
class Singeltone(type):
instances = dict()
def __call__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if cls.__name__ not in Singeltone.instances:
Singeltone.instances[cls.__name__] = type.__call__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
return Singeltone.instances[cls.__name__]
class Test(object):
__metaclass__ = Singeltone
inst0 = Test()
inst1 = Test()
print(id(inst1) == id(inst0))
OK, singleton could be good or evil, I know. This is my implementation, and I simply extend a classic approach to introduce a cache inside and produce many instances of a different type or, many instances of same type, but with different arguments.
I called it Singleton_group, because it groups similar instances together and prevent that an object of the same class, with same arguments, could be created:
# Peppelinux's cached singleton
class Singleton_group(object):
__instances_args_dict = {}
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if not cls.__instances_args_dict.get((cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs))):
cls.__instances_args_dict[(cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs))] = super(Singleton_group, cls).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
return cls.__instances_args_dict.get((cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs)))
# It's a dummy real world use example:
class test(Singleton_group):
def __init__(self, salute):
self.salute = salute
a = test('bye')
b = test('hi')
c = test('bye')
d = test('hi')
e = test('goodbye')
f = test('goodbye')
id(a)
3070148780L
id(b)
3070148908L
id(c)
3070148780L
b == d
True
b._Singleton_group__instances_args_dict
{('test', ('bye',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec0ac>,
('test', ('goodbye',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec32c>,
('test', ('hi',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec12c>}
Every object carries the singleton cache... This could be evil, but it works great for some :)
My simple solution which is based on the default value of function parameters.
def getSystemContext(contextObjList=[]):
if len( contextObjList ) == 0:
contextObjList.append( Context() )
pass
return contextObjList[0]
class Context(object):
# Anything you want here
Being relatively new to Python I'm not sure what the most common idiom is, but the simplest thing I can think of is just using a module instead of a class. What would have been instance methods on your class become just functions in the module and any data just becomes variables in the module instead of members of the class. I suspect this is the pythonic approach to solving the type of problem that people use singletons for.
If you really want a singleton class, there's a reasonable implementation described on the first hit on Google for "Python singleton", specifically:
class Singleton:
__single = None
def __init__( self ):
if Singleton.__single:
raise Singleton.__single
Singleton.__single = self
That seems to do the trick.
Singleton's half brother
I completely agree with staale and I leave here a sample of creating a singleton half brother:
class void:pass
a = void();
a.__class__ = Singleton
a will report now as being of the same class as singleton even if it does not look like it. So singletons using complicated classes end up depending on we don't mess much with them.
Being so, we can have the same effect and use simpler things like a variable or a module. Still, if we want use classes for clarity and because in Python a class is an object, so we already have the object (not and instance, but it will do just like).
class Singleton:
def __new__(cls): raise AssertionError # Singletons can't have instances
There we have a nice assertion error if we try to create an instance, and we can store on derivations static members and make changes to them at runtime (I love Python). This object is as good as other about half brothers (you still can create them if you wish), however it will tend to run faster due to simplicity.
In cases where you don't want the metaclass-based solution above, and you don't like the simple function decorator-based approach (e.g. because in that case static methods on the singleton class won't work), this compromise works:
class singleton(object):
"""Singleton decorator."""
def __init__(self, cls):
self.__dict__['cls'] = cls
instances = {}
def __call__(self):
if self.cls not in self.instances:
self.instances[self.cls] = self.cls()
return self.instances[self.cls]
def __getattr__(self, attr):
return getattr(self.__dict__['cls'], attr)
def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
return setattr(self.__dict__['cls'], attr, value)