attributes of Python classes

[Mike C. Fletcher]

beliavsky at aol.com wrote:

>I have started using classes with Python and have a question
>about their use.
>
>In Python, 'attributes are all "public" and "virtual" in C++ 
>terms; they're all accessible everywhere and all looked up 
>dynamically at runtime' (Quoting "Learning Python", 2nd. ed., 
>p367). It seems to me that two good conventions are to 
>
>(1) initialize all attributes in the __init__ function
>(2) avoid creating new attributes elsewhere that are not initialized in
>    __init__
>
>I have not followed these conventions so far, and sometimes
>it is difficult for me to tell what attributes an instance of
>a class has. Are these conventions good?
>  
>

I actually go a very different way.  Use properties/descriptors for 
everything, with the properties declared directly in the class 
definition something like so:

class SessionImporter( sessiondata.SessionData ):
    """Holder for importing data with an interactive session

    Primary purpose of this class is to provide a way to safely
    store partially-constructed records which may reference either
    database-resident records, or other partially-constructed
    records.
    """
    sourceText = common.StringProperty(
        "sourceText", """Source of the data being imported""",
        defaultValue = "",
    )
    newObjectID = common.IntegerProperty(
        "newObjectID", """Sequence for the newObjectID of newly created 
objects""",
        defaultValue = 0,
    )
    newObjects = common.DictionaryProperty(
        "newObjects", """New objects, indexed by newObjectID""",
    )
    rootObjects = common.ListProperty(
        "rootObjects", """IDs for each root-object to be stored""",
    )

and then use generic __init__ and the like that can take any set of 
specified properties.  This way each attribute is fully documented, can 
have intelligently calculated defaults, can be initialised anywhere, 
etceteras, but there's not the huge collections of boilerplate 
initialisation, copying, etceteras code that's needed with bare 
attributes.  The fact that it also allows for type-checking and 
coercian, and generic code for working with properties, is a nice 
side-effect :)

There's still the possibility of having properties without values, but 
if that's undesired, just declare each with the default of None or "" or 
whatever you like *for that particular property*.

Have fun,
Mike

_______________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/