How to apply Closed-Open and Inversion of Control principles in Python? - python

Building out a new application now and struggling a lot with the implementation part of "Closed-Open" and "Inversion of Control" principles I following after reading Clean Architecture book by Uncle Bob.
How can I implement them in Python?
Usually, these two principles coming hand in hand and depicted in the UML as an Interface reversing control from module/package A to B.
I'm confused because:
Python does not possess Interfaces as Java and C++ do. Yes, there are ABC and #abstractmethod, but it is not a Pythonic style and redundant from my point of view if you are not developing a framework
Passing a class to the method of another one (I understood that it is a way to implement open-closed principle) is a little bit dangerous in Python, since it does not have a compiler which is catching issues may (and will) happen if one of two loosely coupled objects change
After neglecting interfaces and passing a top-level class to lower-level ones... I still need to import everything somewhere at the top module. And by that, the whole thing is violated.
So, as you can see I'm super confused and having a hard time programming according to my design. I came up with. Can you help me, please?

You just pass an object that implements the methods you need it to implement.
True, there is no "Interface" to define what those methods have to be, but that's just the way it is in python.
You pass around arguments all the time that have to be lists, maps, tuples, or whatever, and none of these are type-checked. You can write code that calls whatever you want on these things and python will not notice any kind of problem until that code is actually executed.
It's exactly the same when you need those arguments to implement whatever IoC interface you're using. Make sure you detail the requirements in comments.
Yes, this is all pretty dangerous. That's why we prefer statically typed languages for large systems that have complex interfaces.

Related

Tracking changes in python source files?

I'm learning python and came into a situation where I need to change the behvaviour of a function. I'm initially a java programmer so in the Java world a change in a function would let Eclipse shows that a lot of source files in Java has errors. That way I can know which files need to get modified. But how would one do such a thing in python considering there are no types?! I'm using TextMate2 for python coding.
Currently I'm doing the brute-force way. Opening every python script file and check where I'm using that function and then modify. But I'm sure this is not the way to deal with large projects!!!
Edit: as an example I define a class called Graph in a python script file. Graph has two objects variables. I created many objects (each with different name!!!) of this class in many script files and then decided that I want to change the name of the object variables! Now I'm going through each file and reading my code again in order to change the names again :(. PLEASE help!
Example: File A has objects x,y,z of class C. File B has objects xx,yy,zz of class C. Class C has two instance variables names that should be changed Foo to Poo and Foo1 to Poo1. Also consider many files like A and B. What would you do to solve this? Are you serisouly going to open each file and search for x,y,z,xx,yy,zz and then change the names individually?!!!
Sounds like you can only code inside an IDE!
Two steps to free yourself from your IDE and become a better programmer.
Write unit tests for your code.
Learn how to use grep
Unit tests will exercise your code and provide reassurance that it is always doing what you wanted it to do. They make refactoring MUCH easier.
grep, what a wonderful tool grep -R 'my_function_name' src will find every reference to your function in files under the directory src.
Also, see this rather wonderful blog post: Unix as an IDE.
Whoa, slow down. The coding process you described is not scalable.
How exactly did you change the behavior of the function? Give specifics, please.
UPDATE: This all sounds like you're trying to implement a class and its methods by cobbling together a motley patchwork of functions and local variables - like I wrongly did when I first learned OO coding in Python. The code smell is that when the type/class of some class internal changes, it should generally not affect the class methods. If you're refactoring all your code every 10 mins, you're doing something seriously wrong. Step back and think about clean decomposition into objects, methods and data members.
(Please give more specifics if you want a more useful answer.)
If you were only changing input types, there might be no need to change the calling code.
(Unless the new fn does something very different to the old one, in which case what was the argument against calling it a different name?)
If you changed the return type, and you can't find a common ancestor type or container (tuple, sequence etc.) to put the return values in, then yes you need to change its caller code. However...
...however if the function should really be a method of a class, declare that class and the method already. The previous paragraph was a code smell that your function really should have been a method, specifically a polymorphic method.
Read about code smells, anti-patterns and When do you know you're dealing with an anti-pattern?. There e.g. you will find a recommendation for the video "Recovery from Addiction - A taste of the Python programming language's concision and elegance from someone who once suffered an addiction to the Java programming language." - Sean Kelly
Also, sounds like you want to use Test-Driven Design and add some unittests.
If you give us the specifics we can critique it better.
You won't get this functionality in a text editor. I use sublime text 3, and I love it, but it doesn't have this functionality. It does however jump to files and functions via its 'Goto Anything' (Ctrl+P) functionality, and its Multiple Selections / Multi Edit is great for small refactoring tasks.
However, when it comes to IDEs, JetBrains pycharm has some of the amazing re-factoring tools that you might be looking for.
The also free Python Tools for Visual Studio (see free install options here which can use the free VS shell) has some excellent Refactoring capabilities and a superb REPL to boot.
I use all three. I spend most of my time in sublime text, I like pycharm for refactoring, and I find PT4VS excellent for very involved prototyping.
Despite python being a dynamically typed language, IDEs can still introspect to a reasonable degree. But, of course, it won't approach the level of Java or C# IDEs. Incidentally, if you are coming over from Java, you may have come across JetBrains IntelliJ, which PyCharm will feel almost identical to.
One's programming style is certainly different between a statically typed language like C# and a dynamic language like python. I find myself doing things in smaller, testable modules. The iteration speed is faster. And in a dynamic language one relies less on IDE tools and more on unit tests that cover the key functionality. If you don't have these you will break things when you refactor.
One answer only specific to your edit:
if your old code was working and does not need to be modified, you could just keep old names as alias of the new ones, resulting in your old code not to be broken. Example:
class MyClass(object):
def __init__(self):
self.t = time.time()
# creating new names
def new_foo(self, arg):
return 'new_foo', arg
def new_bar(self, arg):
return 'new_bar', arg
# now creating functions aliases
foo = new_foo
bar = new_bar
if your code need rework, rewrite your common code, execute everything, and correct any failure. You could also look for any import/instantiation of your class.
One of the tradeoffs between statically and dynamically typed languages is that the latter require less scaffolding in the form of type declarations, but also provide less help with refactoring tools and compile-time error detection. Some Python IDEs do offer a certain level of type inference and help with refactoring, but even the best of them will not be able to match the tools developed for statically typed languages.
Dynamic language programmers typically ensure correctness while refactoring in one or more of the following ways:
Use grep to look for function invocation sites, and fix them. (You would have to do that in languages like Java as well if you wanted to handle reflection.)
Start the application and see what goes wrong.
Write unit tests, if you don't already have them, use a coverage tool to make sure that they cover your whole program, and run the test suite after each change to check that everything still works.

OOP programming in python

I was reading Dietel's C++ programming book. In this book they mention how a programmer should release only the interface part of his code and not the implementation.
So carrying this over to python:
I have 2 files:
1) the implementation file = accountClass.py and
2) the interface file = useAccountClass.py
I have compiled the implementation file and have obtained the .pyc file. So when I provide my code to someone else, I would provide him with the .pyc file and the interface file, right?
Also, if I provide someone else with ONLY the .pyc file, can I expect him to write the interface on his own? I'm going to say no. But there's this one nagging doubt that I have:
The creators of numpy and scipy did not share the implementation with us end users. And I don't think they shared any interfaces either. But we can still search for the different classes and their methods inside both numpy and scipy. So, using this example of numpy and scipy, I guess what I'm trying to ask is:
Is it possible for someone else to create an interface to my code if I provide him/ her with only the compiled implementation file (in this case accountClass.pyc)? How will that person know what classes and methods I have defined in my implementation? I mean, will they use the
if __name__ = "__main__" :
blah blah
or is there some other way??
You got that entirely wrong. Or perhaps it's a horrible book whose author got something seriously wrong. Code using other code should indeed, barring significant counterarguments, adhere to an interface and not care about the details of the implementation. However, even in the world of static compilation to machine code (e.g. C++), this does not mean you should lock away the source code of the implementation.
Whether someone has access to the implementation, and whether they make use of that knowledge while writing a specific piece of code, are completely different issues. Heck, even the author of the implementation can/should still program to an interface when working on other code (e.g. other modules). Likewise, even if you lock the implementation away from someone, they may very well rely on implementation quirks which are not part of the interface. If anyone in the world of static compilation to machine code provides only headers and object files, and not the source code, it's because the projects are closed source, not to encourage good programming practices among clients.
In Python, your question makes no sense - there are no "interface" and "implementation" files, there's just code which is run and defines functions, classes, and other values. There is no such thing as an interface file you'd provide. You provide an implementation - and (hopefully) documentation which details both interface and possibly implementation details. And once a module is imported, the class objects, function objects, and other objects, contain plenty of information (including, in many cases, the text from which large parts of the documentation was generated). This is also true for extension modules like numpy. And note that their implementation is accessible, it's just not included in all distributions because it's of little use. With Python code, you practically have to distribute the source code because anything else is platform-specific.
On a side note, .pyc files are pretty high level, and easily understood when disassembled (which is as easy as importing the module and running the stdlib module dis on any function inside). I consider this a minor technicality as it's already the wrong question to ask.
Deitel's advice to C++ programmers doesn't apply to Python, for a number of reasons:
Python isn't compiled to machine code, so no matter what form you provide the program in, it will be relatively easy for someone to read the code.
Python doesn't have .h and .c files, all you can provide is the .py or .pyc files.
Treating code as a secret is kind of silly anyway. What is in your code that you need to keep hidden from others?
Numpy and Scipy are largely implemented in C, which is why you don't have the source, for your own convenience. You can get the source if you like. The "interface" to that code is the module that you can import and then call.
You should not confuse "user interface" with "class interface". If you have a useAccountClass file, that file probably performs some task using the classes and methods defined in the accountClass file, if I understood right.
If you send the file to other person, they are not supposed to "guess" what your compiled class does. That's what DOCUMENTATION is for: a description of the functions contained in the module (compiled or not), which parameters they take, which values they return, and what they are expected to do, the "meaning" of the task they perform.
As an abstract example, let's suppose you have an image processing class. If that class has the function findCircles(image), the documentation should explain that it takes an image, possibly containing circles, and returns a list or array of coordinates of the centers of circles contained in the image. HOW the circles are detected is not important, you don't need to know that to use the function. Now if the function was called like findCircles(image, gaussian_threshold=10), the caller would have to know the function uses some "gaussian_threshold" parameter, that is, the caller would NEED to know about the function's entrails, and in OOP this is Not Good. If you decided to use another algorithm in the future, every code using that function would have to be rewritten, because the gaussian_threshold most probably wouldn't make sense anymore.
So, the interface, in OOP, is the abstraction used to communicate to the object only the canonical parameters or inputs it needs to know to perform a task in the language of the problem, not in the language of the implementation (that can change anytime).
The documentation, in this sense, is a contract that assures to the user (in this case, another developer) that the function will perform as expected if sane inputs are given to it.
Now the FINAL USER, a non-technical person wanting to use your program, would need the WHOLE working program (controls and views), not only the class definitions (the model).
Hope this helps, and I must recommend the books "Code Complete 2nd ed." and "Pragmatic Programmer - From Journeyman to Master" as VERY enlightening readings on the broad topic.

Should I treat my own single underscored attributes as private?

If I use a single leading underscore for an attribute in a class, would it be wrong of me to access it from a different object? Is a single underscore saying "I will use this as I please but you the user shouldn't touch it" or should even the developer treat it as though it were private?
The single underscore indicates that it's not for public consumption; code within the same package is welcome to poke and prod it.
I think you should refrain from doing so as much as reasonably possible because it breaks encapsulation which one of the benefits of the object-oriented paradigm. While some feel it's fine as certain higher levels of scoping, say module or package, I've found avoiding doing so a useful rule-of-thumb even within the various methods of a single class -- at least if it's fairly complicated, subtle, or just an aspect I think I might want to change later.
The reason is every time you do something with one, you're creating a dependency between one object's internals and where you're coding, be it another part of the same object or module or whatever. The more of this there is, the harder it will be later to maintain or enhance things.
Another aspect to consider is the fact that whenever you feel a need to do so, it may be indicative of a need for a better design -- in which cause you can treat it a warning sign and react accordingly.
Creating an interface for doing operations that deal with internal details often means having to design and implement more code than not doing so would. So in each case, the benefits must be weighed against the costs to determine if it's worth it. Eventually experience (and education if it's ongoing) makes such decisions easier maybe even instinctual.

Module vs object-oriented programming in vba

My first "serious" language was Java, so I have comprehended object-oriented programming in sense that elemental brick of program is a class.
Now I write on VBA and Python. There are module languages and I am feeling persistent discomfort: I don't know how should I decompose program in a modules/classes.
I understand that one module corresponds to one knowledge domain, one module should ba able to test separately...
Should I apprehend module as namespace(c++) only?
I don't do VBA but in python, modules are fundamental. As you say, the can be viewed as namespaces but they are also objects in their own right. They are not classes however, so you cannot inherit from them (at least not directly).
I find that it's a good rule to keep a module concerned with one domain area. The rule that I use for deciding if something is a module level function or a class method is to ask myself if it could meaningfully be used on any objects that satisfy the 'interface' that it's arguments take. If so, then I free it from a class hierarchy and make it a module level function. If its usefulness truly is restricted to a particular class hierarchy, then I make it a method.
If you need it work on all instances of a class hierarchy and you make it a module level function, just remember that all the the subclasses still need to implement the given interface with the given semantics. This is one of the tradeoffs of stepping away from methods: you can no longer make a slight modification and call super. On the other hand, if subclasses are likely to redefine the interface and its semantics, then maybe that particular class hierarchy isn't a very good abstraction and should be rethought.
It is matter of taste. If you use modules your 'program' will be more procedural oriented. If you choose classes it will be more or less object oriented. I'm working with Excel for couple of months and personally I choose classes whenever I can because it is more comfortable to me. If you stop thinking about objects and think of them as Components you can use them with elegance. The main reason why I prefer classes is that you can have it more that one. You can't have two instances of module. It allows me use encapsulation and better code reuse.
For example let's assume that you like to have some kind of logger, to log actions that were done by your program during execution. You can write a module for that. It can have for example a global variable indicating on which particular sheet logging will be done. But consider the following hypothetical situation: your client wants you to include some fancy report generation functionality in your program. You are smart so you figure out that you can use your logging code to prepare them. But you can't do log and report simultaneously by one module. And you can with two instances of logging Component without any changes in their code.
Idioms of languages are different and thats the reason a problem solved in different languages take different approaches.
"C" is all about procedural decomposition.
Main idiom in Java is about "class or Object" decomposition. Functions are not absent, but they become a part of exhibited behavior of these classes.
"Python" provides support for both Class based problem decomposition as well as procedural based.
All of these uses files, packages or modules as concept for organizing large code pieces together. There is nothing that restricts you to have one module for one knowledge domain.
These are decomposition and organizing techniques and can be applied based on the problem at hand.
If you are comfortable with OO, you should be able to use it very well in Python.
VBA also allows the use of classes. Unfortunately, those classes don't support all the features of a full-fleged object oriented language. Especially inheritance is not supported.
But you can work with interfaces, at least up to a certain degree.
I only used modules like "one module = one singleton". My modules contain "static" or even stateless methods. So in my opinion a VBa module is not namespace. More often a bunch of classes and modules would form a "namespace". I often create a new project (DLL, DVB or something similar) for such a "namespace".

Why is IoC / DI not common in Python?

In Java IoC / DI is a very common practice which is extensively used in web applications, nearly all available frameworks and Java EE. On the other hand, there are also lots of big Python web applications, but beside of Zope (which I've heard should be really horrible to code) IoC doesn't seem to be very common in the Python world. (Please name some examples if you think that I'm wrong).
There are of course several clones of popular Java IoC frameworks available for Python, springpython for example. But none of them seems to get used practically. At least, I've never stumpled upon a Django or sqlalchemy+<insert your favorite wsgi toolkit here> based web application which uses something like that.
In my opinion IoC has reasonable advantages and would make it easy to replace the django-default-user-model for example, but extensive usage of interface classes and IoC in Python looks a bit odd and not »pythonic«. But maybe someone has a better explanation, why IoC isn't widely used in Python.
I don't actually think that DI/IoC are that uncommon in Python. What is uncommon, however, are DI/IoC frameworks/containers.
Think about it: what does a DI container do? It allows you to
wire together independent components into a complete application ...
... at runtime.
We have names for "wiring together" and "at runtime":
scripting
dynamic
So, a DI container is nothing but an interpreter for a dynamic scripting language. Actually, let me rephrase that: a typical Java/.NET DI container is nothing but a crappy interpreter for a really bad dynamic scripting language with butt-ugly, sometimes XML-based, syntax.
When you program in Python, why would you want to use an ugly, bad scripting language when you have a beautiful, brilliant scripting language at your disposal? Actually, that's a more general question: when you program in pretty much any language, why would you want to use an ugly, bad scripting language when you have Jython and IronPython at your disposal?
So, to recap: the practice of DI/IoC is just as important in Python as it is in Java, for exactly the same reasons. The implementation of DI/IoC however, is built into the language and often so lightweight that it completely vanishes.
(Here's a brief aside for an analogy: in assembly, a subroutine call is a pretty major deal - you have to save your local variables and registers to memory, save your return address somewhere, change the instruction pointer to the subroutine you are calling, arrange for it to somehow jump back into your subroutine when it is finished, put the arguments somewhere where the callee can find them, and so on. IOW: in assembly, "subroutine call" is a Design Pattern, and before there were languages like Fortran which had subroutine calls built in, people were building their own "subroutine frameworks". Would you say that subroutine calls are "uncommon" in Python, just because you don't use subroutine frameworks?)
BTW: for an example of what it looks like to take DI to its logical conclusion, take a look at Gilad Bracha's Newspeak Programming Language and his writings on the subject:
Constructors Considered Harmful
Lethal Injection
A Ban on Imports (continued)
IoC and DI are super common in mature Python code. You just don't need a framework to implement DI thanks to duck typing.
The best example is how you set up a Django application using settings.py:
# settings.py
CACHES = {
'default': {
'BACKEND': 'django_redis.cache.RedisCache',
'LOCATION': REDIS_URL + '/1',
},
'local': {
'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache',
'LOCATION': 'snowflake',
}
}
Django Rest Framework utilizes DI heavily:
class FooView(APIView):
# The "injected" dependencies:
permission_classes = (IsAuthenticated, )
throttle_classes = (ScopedRateThrottle, )
parser_classes = (parsers.FormParser, parsers.JSONParser, parsers.MultiPartParser)
renderer_classes = (renderers.JSONRenderer,)
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
pass
def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
pass
Let me remind (source):
"Dependency Injection" is a 25-dollar term for a 5-cent concept. [...] Dependency injection means giving an object its instance variables. [...].
Part of it is the way the module system works in Python. You can get a sort of "singleton" for free, just by importing it from a module. Define an actual instance of an object in a module, and then any client code can import it and actually get a working, fully constructed / populated object.
This is in contrast to Java, where you don't import actual instances of objects. This means you are always having to instantiate them yourself, (or use some sort of IoC/DI style approach). You can mitigate the hassle of having to instantiate everything yourself by having static factory methods (or actual factory classes), but then you still incur the resource overhead of actually creating new ones each time.
Django makes great use of inversion of control. For instance, the database server is selected by the configuration file, then the framework provides appropriate database wrapper instances to database clients.
The difference is that Python has first-class types. Data types, including classes, are themselves objects. If you want something to use a particular class, simply name the class. For example:
if config_dbms_name == 'postgresql':
import psycopg
self.database_interface = psycopg
elif config_dbms_name == 'mysql':
...
Later code can then create a database interface by writing:
my_db_connection = self.database_interface()
# Do stuff with database.
Instead of the boilerplate factory functions that Java and C++ need, Python does it with one or two lines of ordinary code. This is the strength of functional versus imperative programming.
It seems that people really don't get what Dependency injection and inversion of control mean anymore.
The practice of using inversion of control is to have classes or functions that depend on other classes or functions, but instead of creating the instances whithin the class or function code it is better to receive them as parameters, so loose coupling can be achieved. That has many benefits as more testability and to achieve the liskov substitution principle.
You see, by working with interfaces and injections, your code gets more maintainable, since you can change the behavior easily, because you won't have to rewrite a single line of code (maybe a line or two on the DI configuration) of your class to change its behavior, since the classes that implement the interface your class is waiting for can vary independently as long as they follow the interface. One of the best strategies to keep code decoupled and easy to maintain is to follow at least the single responsibility, substitution and dependency inversion principles.
What's a DI library good for if you can instantiate an object yourself inside a package and import it to inject it yourself? The chosen answer is right, since java has no procedural sections (code outside of classes), all that goes into boring configuration xml's, hence the need of a class to instantiate and inject dependencies on a lazy load fashion so you don't blow away your performance, while on python you just code the injections in the "procedural" (code outside classes) sections of your code.
Haven't used Python in several years, but I would say that it has more to do with it being a dynamically typed language than anything else. For a simple example, in Java, if I wanted to test that something wrote to standard out appropriately I could use DI and pass in any PrintStream to capture the text being written and verify it. When I'm working in Ruby, however, I can dynamically replace the 'puts' method on STDOUT to do the verify, leaving DI completely out of the picture. If the only reason I'm creating an abstraction is to test the class that's using it (think File system operations or the clock in Java) then DI/IoC creates unnecessary complexity in the solution.
Actually, it is quite easy to write sufficiently clean and compact code with DI (I wonder, will it be/stay pythonic then, but anyway :) ), for example I actually perefer this way of coding:
def polite(name_str):
return "dear " + name_str
def rude(name_str):
return name_str + ", you, moron"
def greet(name_str, call=polite):
print "Hello, " + call(name_str) + "!"
_
>>greet("Peter")
Hello, dear Peter!
>>greet("Jack", rude)
Hello, Jack, you, moron!
Yes, this can be viewed as just a simple form of parameterizing functions/classes, but it does its work. So, maybe Python's default-included batteries are enough here too.
P.S. I have also posted a larger example of this naive approach at Dynamically evaluating simple boolean logic in Python.
IoC/DI is a design concept, but unfortunately it's often taken as a concept that applies to certain languages (or typing systems). I'd love to see dependency injection containers become far more popular in Python. There's Spring, but that's a super-framework and seems to be a direct port of the Java concepts without much consideration for "The Python Way."
Given Annotations in Python 3, I decided to have a crack at a full featured, but simple, dependency injection container: https://github.com/zsims/dic . It's based on some concepts from a .NET dependency injection container (which IMO is fantastic if you're ever playing in that space), but mutated with Python concepts.
I think due to the dynamic nature of python people don't often see the need for another dynamic framework. When a class inherits from the new-style 'object' you can create a new variable dynamically (https://wiki.python.org/moin/NewClassVsClassicClass).
i.e.
In plain python:
#application.py
class Application(object):
def __init__(self):
pass
#main.py
Application.postgres_connection = PostgresConnection()
#other.py
postgres_connection = Application.postgres_connection
db_data = postgres_connection.fetchone()
However have a look at https://github.com/noodleflake/pyioc this might be what you are looking for.
i.e. In pyioc
from libs.service_locator import ServiceLocator
#main.py
ServiceLocator.register(PostgresConnection)
#other.py
postgres_connection = ServiceLocator.resolve(PostgresConnection)
db_data = postgres_connection.fetchone()
pytest fixtures all based on DI (source)
Check out FastAPI, it has dependency injection built-in. For example:
from fastapi import Depends, FastAPI
async def get_db():
db = DBSession()
try:
yield db
except Exception:
db.rollback()
raise
finally:
db.close()
app = FastAPI()
#app.get("/items")
def get_items(db=Depends(get_db)):
return db.get_items()
I back "Jörg W Mittag" answer: "The Python implementation of DI/IoC is so lightweight that it completely vanishes".
To back up this statement, take a look at the famous Martin Fowler's example ported from Java to Python: Python:Design_Patterns:Inversion_of_Control
As you can see from the above link, a "Container" in Python can be written in 8 lines of code:
class Container:
def __init__(self, system_data):
for component_name, component_class, component_args in system_data:
if type(component_class) == types.ClassType:
args = [self.__dict__[arg] for arg in component_args]
self.__dict__[component_name] = component_class(*args)
else:
self.__dict__[component_name] = component_class
My 2cents is that in most Python applications you don't need it and, even if you needed it, chances are that many Java haters (and incompetent fiddlers who believe to be developers) consider it as something bad, just because it's popular in Java.
An IoC system is actually useful when you have complex networks of objects, where each object may be a dependency for several others and, in turn, be itself a dependant on other objects. In such a case you'll want to define all these objects once and have a mechanism to put them together automatically, based on as many implicit rules as possible. If you also have configuration to be defined in a simple way by the application user/administrator, that's an additional reason to desire an IoC system that can read its components from something like a simple XML file (which would be the configuration).
The typical Python application is much simpler, just a bunch of scripts, without such a complex architecture. Personally I'm aware of what an IoC actually is (contrary to those who wrote certain answers here) and I've never felt the need for it in my limited Python experience (also I don't use Spring everywhere, not when the advantages it gives don't justify its development overhead).
That said, there are Python situations where the IoC approach is actually useful and, in fact, I read here that Django uses it.
The same reasoning above could be applied to Aspect Oriented Programming in the Java world, with the difference that the number of cases where AOP is really worthwhile is even more limited.
You can do dependency injection with Python manually, but manual approach has its downsides:
lots of boilerplate code to do the wiring. You can use dynamic features of Python to do the injection, but then you're loosing IDE support (e.g. Ctrl+Space in PyCharm), and you're making code harder to understand and debug
no standards: every programmer has its own way for solving same problems, this leads to reinventing the wheel, understanding each other's code can quickly become a pain. Dependency injection library provides easy framework to plug-in
To have it all we NEED a dependency injection framework, for example this one https://python-dependency-injector.ets-labs.org/index.html seems to be the most mature DI framework for Python.
For smaller apps DI container is not necessary, for anything that has few hundred lines of code or more, DI container is a must have to keep your code maintaineable.
I agree with #Jorg in the point that DI/IoC is possible, easier and even more beautiful in Python. What's missing is the frameworks supporting it, but there are a few exceptions. To point a couple of examples that come to my mind:
Django comments let you wire your own Comment class with your custom logic and forms. [More Info]
Django let you use a custom Profile object to attach to your User model. This is not completely IoC but is a good approach. Personally I'd like to replace the hole User model as the comments framework does. [More Info]
IoC containers are "mimicked" mostly using **kwargs
class A:
def __init__(self, **kwargs):
print(kwargs)
Class B:
pass
Class C:
pass
Ainstance = A(b=B, c=C)
In my opinion, things like dependency injection are symptoms of a rigid and over-complex framework. When the main body of code becomes much too weighty to change easily, you find yourself having to pick small parts of it, define interfaces for them, and then allowing people to change behaviour via the objects that plug into those interfaces. That's all well and good, but it's better to avoid that sort of complexity in the first place.
It's also the symptom of a statically-typed language. When the only tool you have to express abstraction is inheritance, then that's pretty much what you use everywhere. Having said that, C++ is pretty similar but never picked up the fascination with Builders and Interfaces everywhere that Java developers did. It is easy to get over-exuberant with the dream of being flexible and extensible at the cost of writing far too much generic code with little real benefit. I think it's a cultural thing.
Typically I think Python people are used to picking the right tool for the job, which is a coherent and simple whole, rather than the One True Tool (With A Thousand Possible Plugins) that can do anything but offers a bewildering array of possible configuration permutations. There are still interchangeable parts where necessary, but with no need for the big formalism of defining fixed interfaces, due to the flexibility of duck-typing and the relative simplicity of the language.
Unlike the strong typed nature in Java. Python's duck typing behavior makes it so easy to pass objects around.
Java developers are focusing on the constructing the class strcuture and relation between objects, while keeping things flexible. IoC is extremely important for achieving this.
Python developers are focusing on getting the work done. They just wire up classes when they need it. They don't even have to worry about the type of the class. As long as it can quack, it's a duck! This nature leaves no room for IoC.

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