class / instance question

[Ben Finney]

belinda thom <bthom at cs.hmc.edu> writes:

> I've written two game classes---Nim and TicTacToe---where each
> derives from a Game class that I've created (it is essentially an
> abstract base class, where I've used an "abstract()" hack to
> somewhat enforce this).

You can use the 'NotImplemented' built-in object, or the
'NotImplementedError' exception, for this purpose:

    class BaseFoo(object):
        """ Abstract base class for Foos """
        def bar(self):
            """ Method which must be overridden in subclass """
            raise NotImplementedError("bar() must be overridden")

    class FrobulatingFoo(BaseFoo):
        """ A Foo that frobulates """
        def bar(self):
            print "Frobulating..."
            print " done."

> I now want to be able to pass either of these classes into a game-
> playing engine, for instance a function
>
> playGame(classOfGameToBePlayed) :
>     # inside of which I create a new game using that class's constructor
>
> Is this possible, and if so, how to approach it?

It works just as you describe. The class is an object, that can be
passed as an argument just like any other object. That object is
callable, and invokes the class constructor to return a new instance
of the class.

    def play_game(game_class):
        """ Play a new game """
        game = game_class()
        game.start_play()

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_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney