I am new to python and trying to learn.
Problem
I am stuck at a place where I initialize and object of a class in the loop. During this initialization I expect that I get a brand new object with all its attribute reset. But that doesn't happen when for the array list the class has.
Example below:
Class MyClass:
id=""
aList=[]
Class SecondClass: # ignore its content
pid=""
anObj=MyClass()
sc1=SecondClass()
anobj.append(sc1)
print str(len(anObj.aList) # gives the output 1
anObj=MyClass() # reinitalizing the object, so I expect on the lines of java that I get an empty class
print str(len(anObj.aList) # gives the output 1, why I just reinitialized the object "anObj"
What I want is after I do anObj=MyClass() all the attributes should be reset. Like java. It seems like anObj (array ) is treated as static variable of class (using Java language)
Problem at deeper depth
I don't want to do anObj.aList=[] explicitly because my issue is some thing like in the below code
aCollection=[]
for x in (0,3):
anObj=MyClass()
sc=getSecondClassObjectWithDifferentValues()
anobj.append(sc)
aCollection.append(anOb)
I am putting anObj in aCollection, eventually I would like to access them in the state I put it.
Thanks in advance for the help
You are confusing static properties with instance property. You should be doing this instead:
Class MyClass:
def __init__(self):
self.id = ""
self.aList = []
The fundamental difference is that, in your implementation, the property aList will be the same for all instances of MyClass. This is why we call them static, because they do not change from instance to instance. In contrast, an instance variable defined as above will be unique for each new instance you create.
This is a super common misunderstanding with python ... effectively, MyClass.aList is a "static" member. The key to understanding this is to understand how python looks up attributes on an object.
First, python look at the instance for the attribute. If it isn't there, then python moves up a level (to the class) and looks for the attribute there. If it isn't on the class, it'll look at the base classes (in the "Method Resolution Order").
So, this (hopefully) explains the problem. you create an instance of MyClass and get a reference to it's list:
c = MyClass()
lst = c.aList
Now, note, c.aList is MyClass.aList because c doesn't have an aList attribute of it's own.
print(lst is MyClass.aList) # True
So, how do we resolve this? The typical fix for this is to bind the aList attribute to the instance at initialization time:
class MyClass(object):
def __init__(self):
self.aList = []
Now, MyClass doesn't have an aList member, but all of it's instances will (and their members will all be distinct).
Related
What is the difference between class and instance variables in Python?
class Complex:
a = 1
and
class Complex:
def __init__(self):
self.a = 1
Using the call: x = Complex().a in both cases assigns x to 1.
A more in-depth answer about __init__() and self will be appreciated.
When you write a class block, you create class attributes (or class variables). All the names you assign in the class block, including methods you define with def become class attributes.
After a class instance is created, anything with a reference to the instance can create instance attributes on it. Inside methods, the "current" instance is almost always bound to the name self, which is why you are thinking of these as "self variables". Usually in object-oriented design, the code attached to a class is supposed to have control over the attributes of instances of that class, so almost all instance attribute assignment is done inside methods, using the reference to the instance received in the self parameter of the method.
Class attributes are often compared to static variables (or methods) as found in languages like Java, C#, or C++. However, if you want to aim for deeper understanding I would avoid thinking of class attributes as "the same" as static variables. While they are often used for the same purposes, the underlying concept is quite different. More on this in the "advanced" section below the line.
An example!
class SomeClass:
def __init__(self):
self.foo = 'I am an instance attribute called foo'
self.foo_list = []
bar = 'I am a class attribute called bar'
bar_list = []
After executing this block, there is a class SomeClass, with 3 class attributes: __init__, bar, and bar_list.
Then we'll create an instance:
instance = SomeClass()
When this happens, SomeClass's __init__ method is executed, receiving the new instance in its self parameter. This method creates two instance attributes: foo and foo_list. Then this instance is assigned into the instance variable, so it's bound to a thing with those two instance attributes: foo and foo_list.
But:
print instance.bar
gives:
I am a class attribute called bar
How did this happen? When we try to retrieve an attribute through the dot syntax, and the attribute doesn't exist, Python goes through a bunch of steps to try and fulfill your request anyway. The next thing it will try is to look at the class attributes of the class of your instance. In this case, it found an attribute bar in SomeClass, so it returned that.
That's also how method calls work by the way. When you call mylist.append(5), for example, mylist doesn't have an attribute named append. But the class of mylist does, and it's bound to a method object. That method object is returned by the mylist.append bit, and then the (5) bit calls the method with the argument 5.
The way this is useful is that all instances of SomeClass will have access to the same bar attribute. We could create a million instances, but we only need to store that one string in memory, because they can all find it.
But you have to be a bit careful. Have a look at the following operations:
sc1 = SomeClass()
sc1.foo_list.append(1)
sc1.bar_list.append(2)
sc2 = SomeClass()
sc2.foo_list.append(10)
sc2.bar_list.append(20)
print sc1.foo_list
print sc1.bar_list
print sc2.foo_list
print sc2.bar_list
What do you think this prints?
[1]
[2, 20]
[10]
[2, 20]
This is because each instance has its own copy of foo_list, so they were appended to separately. But all instances share access to the same bar_list. So when we did sc1.bar_list.append(2) it affected sc2, even though sc2 didn't exist yet! And likewise sc2.bar_list.append(20) affected the bar_list retrieved through sc1. This is often not what you want.
Advanced study follows. :)
To really grok Python, coming from traditional statically typed OO-languages like Java and C#, you have to learn to rethink classes a little bit.
In Java, a class isn't really a thing in its own right. When you write a class you're more declaring a bunch of things that all instances of that class have in common. At runtime, there's only instances (and static methods/variables, but those are really just global variables and functions in a namespace associated with a class, nothing to do with OO really). Classes are the way you write down in your source code what the instances will be like at runtime; they only "exist" in your source code, not in the running program.
In Python, a class is nothing special. It's an object just like anything else. So "class attributes" are in fact exactly the same thing as "instance attributes"; in reality there's just "attributes". The only reason for drawing a distinction is that we tend to use objects which are classes differently from objects which are not classes. The underlying machinery is all the same. This is why I say it would be a mistake to think of class attributes as static variables from other languages.
But the thing that really makes Python classes different from Java-style classes is that just like any other object each class is an instance of some class!
In Python, most classes are instances of a builtin class called type. It is this class that controls the common behaviour of classes, and makes all the OO stuff the way it does. The default OO way of having instances of classes that have their own attributes, and have common methods/attributes defined by their class, is just a protocol in Python. You can change most aspects of it if you want. If you've ever heard of using a metaclass, all that is is defining a class that is an instance of a different class than type.
The only really "special" thing about classes (aside from all the builtin machinery to make them work they way they do by default), is the class block syntax, to make it easier for you to create instances of type. This:
class Foo(BaseFoo):
def __init__(self, foo):
self.foo = foo
z = 28
is roughly equivalent to the following:
def __init__(self, foo):
self.foo = foo
classdict = {'__init__': __init__, 'z': 28 }
Foo = type('Foo', (BaseFoo,) classdict)
And it will arrange for all the contents of classdict to become attributes of the object that gets created.
So then it becomes almost trivial to see that you can access a class attribute by Class.attribute just as easily as i = Class(); i.attribute. Both i and Class are objects, and objects have attributes. This also makes it easy to understand how you can modify a class after it's been created; just assign its attributes the same way you would with any other object!
In fact, instances have no particular special relationship with the class used to create them. The way Python knows which class to search for attributes that aren't found in the instance is by the hidden __class__ attribute. Which you can read to find out what class this is an instance of, just as with any other attribute: c = some_instance.__class__. Now you have a variable c bound to a class, even though it probably doesn't have the same name as the class. You can use this to access class attributes, or even call it to create more instances of it (even though you don't know what class it is!).
And you can even assign to i.__class__ to change what class it is an instance of! If you do this, nothing in particular happens immediately. It's not earth-shattering. All that it means is that when you look up attributes that don't exist in the instance, Python will go look at the new contents of __class__. Since that includes most methods, and methods usually expect the instance they're operating on to be in certain states, this usually results in errors if you do it at random, and it's very confusing, but it can be done. If you're very careful, the thing you store in __class__ doesn't even have to be a class object; all Python's going to do with it is look up attributes under certain circumstances, so all you need is an object that has the right kind of attributes (some caveats aside where Python does get picky about things being classes or instances of a particular class).
That's probably enough for now. Hopefully (if you've even read this far) I haven't confused you too much. Python is neat when you learn how it works. :)
What you're calling an "instance" variable isn't actually an instance variable; it's a class variable. See the language reference about classes.
In your example, the a appears to be an instance variable because it is immutable. It's nature as a class variable can be seen in the case when you assign a mutable object:
>>> class Complex:
>>> a = []
>>>
>>> b = Complex()
>>> c = Complex()
>>>
>>> # What do they look like?
>>> b.a
[]
>>> c.a
[]
>>>
>>> # Change b...
>>> b.a.append('Hello')
>>> b.a
['Hello']
>>> # What does c look like?
>>> c.a
['Hello']
If you used self, then it would be a true instance variable, and thus each instance would have it's own unique a. An object's __init__ function is called when a new instance is created, and self is a reference to that instance.
So I have a somewhat long and growing list of classes in a script. At a certain point in the script I want to be able to test an arbitrary instance for its type, and then whatever that type is, I want to create a second object of the same type. I've tried researching this and I know I can accomplish this by storing every class in a dictionary, like so:
class Foo(object):
pass
class Bar(object):
pass
d = {"Foo": Foo, "Bar": Bar}
x = dict["Foo"]()
It does the trick, allowing me to use a variable or string containing the name of the class, in order to create an instance of the class. However, it requires that every time I create a new class I have to remember to also put a new entry in the dictionary--which isn't the worst thing in the world, but as they say, if you're doing the same task more than once you should make a computer do it.
Is there a better way? Can you somehow take a variable or string containing the name of a class, and without knowing what value the variable or string has, generate an instance of the class?
So this is answering your problem rather than your question, but it seems you actually want to create another instance of an object rather than find a class by name. So that is even easier because you can find the class of an object with the type function. So to create a new instance b of the same type as a but with constructor parameters args simply do:
b = type(a)(args)
All classes are in globals dictionary (dictionary containing the current scope's global variables). Get the dictionary with globals(), and then find it by name (string). As a result you will get a class, which can be instantiated with ().
class Foo(object):
pass
x = globals()['Foo']()
Not sure why Huazuo Gao didn't make that an answer, but it solves my problem exactly and I've never seen that solution in my research on this problem--so I'll go ahead and punch it up as an answer.
You can do it using the string of the name of the class and the eval() function. So
class Foo(object):
pass
a = Foo()
s = str(type(a))
# The string produced isn't quite the name of the class so it has to be stripped
# of some surrounding characters.
m = s.find('.')
n1 = s.find("'")
n2 = s[n1+1:].find("'")
s = s[m+1:n1+n2+1]
b = eval(s + "()")
produces the desired behavior.
I'm trying to modify class attribute by reference to object in __init__ method and then use it in another method. Sadly the following code sample doesn't work as expected...
CODE
class Translator:
#list of attributes
parser=None
def __init__(self):
parser = Parser_class() ...
#some other commands
def Translate(self):
something=self.parser.GenerateHead() ...
#more commands
COMPILE ERR
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'GenerateHead'
I know that I can give it to the Translate method as argument, I'm just curious why this statement within Python doesn't work.
You're doing your instance attributes wrong.
First off, you don't need to declare your attributes ahead of time. Putting parser = None at the top level of the class creates a class variable named parser, which I don't think is what you want. Usually in Python you can add new instance attributes at any time by a simple assignment: instance.attr = "whatever".
Second, when you want to do an instance assignment from within a method, you need to use self to refer to the instance. If you leave off self, you'll be assigning to a local variable inside your function, not to an instance or class variable. Actually, the specific name self isn't necessary, but you do need to use the first argument to the method (and it's probably not a good idea to break the convention of naming that self).
So, to fix your code, do this:
class Translator:
# don't declare variables at class level (unless you actually want class variables)
def __init__(self):
self.parser = Parser_class() # use self to assign an instance attribute
def Translate(self):
something = self.parser.GenerateHead() # this should now work
This question already has answers here:
Weird list behavior in class
(4 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I'm doing some practicing with OOP in python and I've run into an issue that my non-computer scientist mind cannot comprehend. I'm sure it's just due to my inexperience with OO but I can't seem to find an answer for it anywhere.
So I've got three classes. A class called tester, which should contain a unique object called group, which should contain a list of objects called atom. My issue is that whenever I create multiple groups they all seem to have the same list object. So whenever I append an atom to the list it gets appended to all the group's lists. My code is:
count = 0
testers = []
class atom:
def __init__(self):
pass
class group:
myList = list()
def __init__(self):
pass
def createAtom(self):
self.myList.append(atom())
class tester:
def __init__(self):
self.myGroup = group()
for k in range(4):
testers.append(tester())
print testers[k].myGroup
for t in testers:
t.myGroup.createAtom()
print t.myGroup.myList
I would expect this to create a new list for each group and that this would add a single atom to each group. This instead creates an output as follows.
<__main__.group instance at 0x02C2E058>
<__main__.group instance at 0x02C2E0A8>
<__main__.group instance at 0x02C2E0F8>
<__main__.group instance at 0x02C2E148>
[<__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E170>]
[<__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E170>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E198>]
[<__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E170>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E198>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E1C0>]
[<__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E170>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E198>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E1C0>, <__main__.atom instance at 0x02C2E1E8>]
A single list gets all four atoms. I apologize for my likely poor code. If it's of any help, I'm using python portable 2.7.5.1. Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Your list is a class attribute, shared amongst all instances:
class group:
myList = [] # class attribute
def __init__(self):
pass
Instead, make it an instance attribute, separate for each instance of the class:
class group:
def __init__(self):
self.myList = [] # instance attribute
Note that I have replaced list() with [], per thefourtheye's comment. It is bad practice to shadow built-ins (e.g. having your own list or other object named list), but this avoids side effects if the rule gets broken.
You've made group.myList a class attribute, shared by all instances.
class group:
#myList = list() # <--- this defines a 'class' attribute
# which is shared by all instances of 'group'
def __init__(self):
self.myList = list() # <--- do this instead to create an instance attribute
def createAtom(self):
self.myList.append(atom())
Move the mylist = list() in class group into the __init__ of class group.
Doing so would make group create a new list every time a new group instance is created. Otherwise, all you've done is create a class-level variable (not instance-level), which will be shared among all instances of the same class.
Think of class variables as sort of a "hive mind" (think of The Borg from Star Trek) structure for all instances of that class. Any changes made to a class variable will be visible to all objects of that type.
On the other hand, if you were to create an instance variable (a variable initialized in __init__), then each instance would have its own value for that variable. Thus any changes that one instance makes to its variable will be invisible to other instances of the same type
While researching about python class attribute and instance attribute, I came to know that it's not possible to create object attribute outside object methods (or may be class method). Like code below will generate an "NameError" in python.
class test(object):
def __init__(self):
self.lst = []
self.str = 'xyz'
Why python doesn't allow this? I'm not questioning language creator's decision, but any reason behind this. Like, is it technically incorrect or any other disadvantage of this behavior.
You are defining a class, so there is no instance to point to outside methods. Drop the `self:
class test(object):
def __init__(self):
self.lst = []
str = 'xyz'
self points to the instance, not the class. You either need to create an instance and assign directly to attributes (test().str = 'xyz') or you need to be inside a method (when self can actually refer to an instance).
self is not a special name in python, you could use \
class test(object):
def __init__(foo):
foo.lst = []
If you want. Every method of a class gets the instance explicitly passed to it as the first parameter, you can call it whatever you want. Trying to access a parameter outside the scope of the method obviously won't work.