BaseBean anti-pattern in Python - python

Background: Coming from Perl world, I'm currently learning Python in my new
job. Apart from doing the work, I'm also trying to get more of "real OOP"
and "pythonic" thinking into my brain cell flow, mostly by reading SO, Python
docs and various articles.
Now in OO design section of Anti-pattern page, Wikipedia lists this
BaseBean, which on its own page is described as:
In object-oriented programming, a BaseBean is a utility object from which
concrete entities are derived (via subclassing). Proper design suggests
that the inherited functionality should be provided via delegation instead.
The BaseBean is an example of an anti-pattern (where the "Bean" part of the
name comes from the standard Java naming convention for a generic entity
object, or JavaBean).
Maybe it's because I have no experience with Java, maybe it's for other reason,
but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this explanation. However, I'm
feeling that few lines of code would be worth thousand words here.
Could anyone help clarify this for me? Preferably using a simple example in Python?

Based on this quote in the Wikipedia article:
Using inheritance causes the derived class to rely on the internals of
a base class which may be out of the control of the developer. While
the utility classes are typically stable and fairly similar across
implementations, some innocuous change in the future could break the
derived class (since the relationship is not well defined). In
addition, it muddies the business meaning of the derived class. For
example, an order is not a vector, although an order may contain a
vector of line items.
it seems to be referring to things like this:
class Order(dict):
def __repr__(self):
return """
Customer: {customer}
Address: {address}
""".format(**self)
o = Order(customer = "Joe Customer", address = "123 Market St")

Related

What is the purpose of getter methods [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
What's the pythonic way to use getters and setters?
(8 answers)
Closed 2 months ago.
Using get/set seems to be a common practice in Java (for various reasons), but I hardly see Python code that uses this.
Why do you use or avoid get/set methods in Python?
In python, you can just access the attribute directly because it is public:
class MyClass:
def __init__(self):
self.my_attribute = 0
my_object = MyClass()
my_object.my_attribute = 1 # etc.
If you want to do something on access or mutation of the attribute, you can use properties:
class MyClass:
def __init__(self):
self._my_attribute = 0
#property
def my_attribute(self):
# Do something if you want
return self._my_attribute
#my_attribute.setter
def my_attribute(self, value):
# Do something if you want
self._my_attribute = value
Crucially, the client code remains the same.
Cool link: Python is not Java :)
In Java, you have to use getters and setters because using public fields gives you no opportunity to go back and change your mind later to using getters and setters. So in Java, you might as well get the chore out of the way up front. In Python, this is silly, because you can start with a normal attribute and change your mind at any time, without affecting any clients of the class. So, don't write getters and setters.
Here is what Guido van Rossum says about that in Masterminds of Programming
What do you mean by "fighting the language"?
Guido: That usually means that they're
trying to continue their habits that
worked well with a different language.
[...] People will turn everything into
a class, and turn every access into an
accessor method,
where that is really not a wise thing to do in Python;
you'll have more verbose code that is
harder to debug and runs a lot slower.
You know the expression "You can write
FORTRAN in any language?" You can write Java in any language, too.
No, it's unpythonic. The generally accepted way is to use normal data attribute and replace the ones that need more complex get/set logic with properties.
The short answer to your question is no, you should use properties when needed. Ryan Tamyoko provides the long answer in his article Getters/Setters/Fuxors
The basic value to take away from all this is that you want to strive to make sure every single line of code has some value or meaning to the programmer. Programming languages are for humans, not machines. If you have code that looks like it doesn’t do anything useful, is hard to read, or seems tedious, then chances are good that Python has some language feature that will let you remove it.
Your observation is correct. This is not a normal style of Python programming. Attributes are all public, so you just access (get, set, delete) them as you would with attributes of any object that has them (not just classes or instances). It's easy to tell when Java programmers learn Python because their Python code looks like Java using Python syntax!
I definitely agree with all previous posters, especially #Maximiliano's link to Phillip's famous article and #Max's suggestion that anything more complex than the standard way of setting (and getting) class and instance attributes is to use Properties (or Descriptors to generalize even more) to customize the getting and setting of attributes! (This includes being able to add your own customized versions of private, protected, friend, or whatever policy you want if you desire something other than public.)
As an interesting demo, in Core Python Programming (chapter 13, section 13.16), I came up with an example of using descriptors to store attributes to disk instead of in memory!! Yes, it's an odd form of persistent storage, but it does show you an example of what is possible!
Here's another related post that you may find useful as well:
Python: multiple properties, one setter/getter
I had come here for that answer(unfortunately i couldn't) . But i found a work around else where . This below code could be alternative for get .
class get_var_lis:
def __init__(self):
pass
def __call__(self):
return [2,3,4]
def __iter__(self):
return iter([2,3,4])
some_other_var = get_var_lis
This is just a workaround . By using the above concept u could easily build get/set methodology in py too.
Our teacher showed one example on class explaining when we should use accessor functions.
class Woman(Human):
def getAge(self):
if self.age > 30:
return super().getAge() - 10
else:
return super().getAge()

Which way is ideal for Python factory registration?

This is a question about which of these methods would be considered as the most Pythonic. I'm not looking for personal opinions, but, instead, what is idiomatic. My background is not in Python, so this will help me.
I'm working on a Python 3 project which is extensible. The idea is similar to the factory pattern, except it is based on functions.
Essentially, users will be able to create a custom function (across packages and projects) which my tool can locate and dynamically invoke. It will also be able to use currying to pass arguments down (but that code is not included here)
My goal is for this to follow good-Pythonic practice. I'm torn between two strategies. And, since Python is not my expertise, I would like to know the pros/cons of the following practices:
Use a decorator
registered = {}
def factoried(name):
def __inner_factory_function(fn):
registered[name] = fn
return fn
return __inner_factory_function
def get_function(name):
return registered[name]
Then, the following function is automatically registered...
#factoried('foo')
def build_foo():
print('hi')
This seems reasonable, but does appear slightly magical to those who are not familiar with decorators.
Force sub-classing of an abstract class and use __subclasses__()
If subclasses are used, there's no need for registration. However, I feel like this forces classes to be defined when a full class may be unnecessary. Also, the use of .__subclasses__() under the hood could seem magical to consumers as well. However, even Java can be used to search for classes with annotations.
Explicit registration
Forget all of the above and force explicit registration. No decorators. No subclasses. Just something like this:
def build_foo():
# ...
factory.register('foo', build_foo)
There is no answer to this question.
The only standard practices promoted by the Python Foundation are PEP 8.
PEP 8 has very little related to higher-level "design-pattern" questions like this, and, in particular, nothing related to your specific question.
And, even if it did, PEP 8 is explicitly only a guideline for "code comprising the standard library in the main Python distribution", and Guido has rejected suggestions to make it some kind of wide-ranging standard that should be enforced on every Python project.
Plus, it hammers home the point that it's only a guideline, not a rigid recommendation.
Of course there are subjective reasons to prefer one design over another.
Ideally, these subjective reasons will usually be driven by some community consensus on what's "idiomatic" or "pythonic". But that community consensus isn't written down anywhere as some objective source you can cite.
There may be arguments that appeal to The Zen of Python, but that itself is just Tim Peters' attempts to distill Guido's own subjective guidelines into a collection of pithy sound bites, not an objective source. (And anyone who takes a brief look at, e.g., the python-ideas list can see that both sides of almost any question can appeal to the Zen…)

Why has Python decided against constant references?

Note: I'm not talking about preventing the rebinding of a variable. I'm talking about preventing the modification of the memory that the variable refers to, and of any memory that can be reached from there by following the nested containers.
I have a large data structure, and I want to expose it to other modules, on a read-only basis. The only way to do that in Python is to deep-copy the particular pieces I'd like to expose - prohibitively expensive in my case.
I am sure this is a very common problem, and it seems like a constant reference would be the perfect solution. But I must be missing something. Perhaps constant references are hard to implement in Python. Perhaps they don't quite do what I think they do.
Any insights would be appreciated.
While the answers are helpful, I haven't seen a single reason why const would be either hard to implement or unworkable in Python. I guess "un-Pythonic" would also count as a valid reason, but is it really? Python does do scrambling of private instance variables (starting with __) to avoid accidental bugs, and const doesn't seem to be that different in spirit.
EDIT: I just offered a very modest bounty. I am looking for a bit more detail about why Python ended up without const. I suspect the reason is that it's really hard to implement to work perfectly; I would like to understand why it's so hard.
It's the same as with private methods: as consenting adults authors of code should agree on an interface without need of force. Because really really enforcing the contract is hard, and doing it the half-assed way leads to hackish code in abundance.
Use get-only descriptors, and state clearly in your documentation that these data is meant to be read only. After all, a determined coder could probably find a way to use your code in different ways you thought of anyways.
In PEP 351, Barry Warsaw proposed a protocol for "freezing" any mutable data structure, analogous to the way that frozenset makes an immutable set. Frozen data structures would be hashable and so capable being used as keys in dictionaries.
The proposal was discussed on python-dev, with Raymond Hettinger's criticism the most detailed.
It's not quite what you're after, but it's the closest I can find, and should give you some idea of the thinking of the Python developers on this subject.
There are many design questions about any language, the answer to most of which is "just because". It's pretty clear that constants like this would go against the ideology of Python.
You can make a read-only class attribute, though, using descriptors. It's not trivial, but it's not very hard. The way it works is that you can make properties (things that look like attributes but call a method on access) using the property decorator; if you make a getter but not a setter property then you will get a read-only attribute. The reason for the metaclass programming is that since __init__ receives a fully-formed instance of the class, you actually can't set the attributes to what you want at this stage! Instead, you have to set them on creation of the class, which means you need a metaclass.
Code from this recipe:
# simple read only attributes with meta-class programming
# method factory for an attribute get method
def getmethod(attrname):
def _getmethod(self):
return self.__readonly__[attrname]
return _getmethod
class metaClass(type):
def __new__(cls,classname,bases,classdict):
readonly = classdict.get('__readonly__',{})
for name,default in readonly.items():
classdict[name] = property(getmethod(name))
return type.__new__(cls,classname,bases,classdict)
class ROClass(object):
__metaclass__ = metaClass
__readonly__ = {'a':1,'b':'text'}
if __name__ == '__main__':
def test1():
t = ROClass()
print t.a
print t.b
def test2():
t = ROClass()
t.a = 2
test1()
While one programmer writing code is a consenting adult, two programmers working on the same code seldom are consenting adults. More so if they do not value the beauty of the code but them deadlines or research funds.
For such adults there is some type safety, provided by Enthought's Traits.
You could look into Constant and ReadOnly traits.
For some additional thoughts, there is a similar question posed about Java here:
Why is there no Constant feature in Java?
When asking why Python has decided against constant references, I think it's helpful to think of how they would be implemented in the language. Should Python have some sort of special declaration, const, to create variable references that can't be changed? Why not allow variables to be declared a float/int/whatever then...these would surely help prevent programming bugs as well. While we're at it, adding class and method modifiers like protected/private/public/etc. would help enforce compile-type checking against illegal uses of these classes. ...pretty soon, we've lost the beauty, simplicity, and elegance that is Python, and we're writing code in some sort of bastard child of C++/Java.
Python also currently passes everything by reference. This would be some sort of special pass-by-reference-but-flag-it-to-prevent-modification...a pretty special case (and as the Tao of Python indicates, just "un-Pythonic").
As mentioned before, without actually changing the language, this type of behaviour can be implemented via classes & descriptors. It may not prevent modification from a determined hacker, but we are consenting adults. Python didn't necessarily decide against providing this as an included module ("batteries included") - there was just never enough demand for it.

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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