I was looking for a way to initialise the derived class using copy constructor and () operator like in C++
class Rectangle {
int width, height;
public:
Rectangle (int,int);
int area () {return (width*height);}
};
Rectangle::Rectangle (int a, int b) {
width = a;
height = b;
}
r = Rectangle(2,3)
s = Rectangle(r) /* <--using copy constructor to initialize*/
and then I was thinking how would I implement this way of intitialisation in case I have a class derived from the other two plus members of its own and came up with the below:
class MyBase1(object):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.x = kwargs.get('x')
self.y = kwargs.get('y')
print("mybase1 {}".format(kwargs))
def print_base1(self):
pass
class MyBase2(object):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.s = kwargs.get('s')
self.p = kwargs.get('p')
print("mybase2 {}".format(kwargs))
def print_base2(self):
pass
class MyChild(MyBase1, MyBase2):
def __init__(self, **kwargs):
MyBase1.__init__(self, **kwargs)
MyBase2.__init__(self, **kwargs)
self.function_name = kwargs.get('function')
def __call__(self, my_base1, my_base2, **kwargs):
initialization_dictionary = dict(vars(my_base1), **vars(my_base2))
initialization_dictionary = dict(initialization_dictionary, **kwargs)
newInstance = MyChild(**initialization_dictionary)
return newInstance
calling then:
base1 = MyBase1(x=1, y=2)
base2 = MyBase2(s=3, p=4)
child = MyChild()(base1, base2, function='arcsine') #<--initialising
[stm for stm in dir(child) if not stm.startswith('__')]
# gives:['function_name', 'p', 'print_base1', 'print_base2', 's', 'x', 'y']
vars(child)
# gives:{'function_name': 'arcsine', 'p': 4, 's': 3, 'x': 1, 'y': 2}
So I was wondering by how much this is non-pythonic way? And if there is a better way (or no-way) to do the same?
Well, you wouldn't want to create an instance to create a new instance so, you probably want a classmethod
or staticmethod
. This isn't the place for using __call__
either.
I might do this:
class MyChild(MyBase1, MyBase2):
@classmethod
def build_from_bases(klass, base1, base2, **kwargs):
kwargs.update(base1.__dict__)
# Note if base2 has values for x and y, they will clobber what was in base1
kwargs.update(base2.__dict__)
return klass(**kwargs)
But using an instance of Base1 and Base2 to build an instance of MyChild doesn't feel like something I'd do in python. Much more likely to use the obvious:
mychild = MyChild(x=base1.x, y=base1.y, s=base2.s, p=base2.p, function='foo')
Really I'd prefer that, now I don't have to be concerned about clobbering values, or other weirdness.
You could combine both, if you really want the short cut method:
class MyChild(MyBase1, MyBase2):
@classmethod
def build_from_bases(klass, base1, base2, **kwargs):
return klass(x=base1.x, y=base1.y, s=base2.s, p=base2.p, **kwargs)
In python less "clever" is frequently "better"