How to get/set class attributes in Python

[tiissa]

Kalle Anke wrote:
> I'm coming to Python from other programming languages. I like to
> hide all attributes of a class and to only provide access to them
> via methods. Some of these languages allows me to write something
> similar to this
> 
> int age( )
> {
>   return theAge
> }
> 
> void age( x : int )
> {
>   theAge = x
> }
> 
> (I usually do more than this in the methods).

You can 'hide' you getsetters using a property attribute[1]:

  >>> class person(object):
  ...     def __init__(self):
  ...             self.age = 0
  ...     def set_age(self, age):
  ...             print 'set %d' % age
  ...             self.__age = age
  ...     def get_age(self):
  ...             print 'get'
  ...             return self.__age
  ...     age = property(get_age, set_age)
  ...
  >>> joe = person()
  set 0
  >>> joe.age = 20
  set 20
  >>> print joe.age
  get
  20
  >>>

[1]http://docs.python.org/lib/built-in-funcs.html