Automatic Generation of Python Class Files

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Sunburned Surveyor a écrit :
> On Oct 22, 10:26 am, "Chris Mellon" <arka... at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
(snip)
>>I can't think of a single reason why you would ever want to do this,
>>since your "list of method and property names" would be just as
>>verbose as just typing the actual python code.
>>
>>Auto generated documentation stubs are considered harmful because they
>>take the place of real documentation.- Hide quoted text -
>>
(snip)
> 
> I don't think I understand how this would be the same amount of
> typing. 

For any well-designed, non-trivial code, my guess is that your solution 
will end up needed *at least* as much typing. Trivial code doesn't of 
course need any kind of code generation - doing it directly will be 
faster anyway. I won't of course talk about badly-designed code...

> Consider the following example that would generate a Monster
> class file from an input text file (I only did one property and method
> in generated class file.):
> 
> Contents of input text file:
> 
> [Name]
> Fire Breathing Dragon

Why do you put spaces in the name ?

> [Properties]
> Strength
> Scariness
> Endurance
> 
> [Methods]
> eatMaiden argMaiden
> fightKnight argKnight
> 
> Generated Python Class File:
> 
> def class FireBreathingDragon:

should be:

class FireBreathingDragon(object):

>    def getStrength(self):

You don't need these getters and setters. Python has support for 
computed attributes (look for 'property'), so until you need to control 
access, a plain attribute is all you need. IOW:

class FireBreathingDragon(object):
    def __init__(self, strength):
       self.strength = strength

    def eat_maiden(self, maiden):
       raise NotImplementedError

<ot>following pep08 (coding style) might be a good idea</ot>

Now if you're doing RPG, there will certainly be some mandatory 
attributes for all characters, both players and non-players - IOW, 
things like strength, endurance etc belong to a base 'Character' class. 
And I seriously doubt that methods like 'eat_maiden' or 'fight_knight' 
will survive the first design round... But anyway, a somewhat more 
realistic example would look like:

from MyRPG import NonPlayerCharacter, FireBreather

class FireBreathingDragon(NonPlayerCharacter, FireBreather):
   def __init__(self, *args, **kw):
     super(FireBreathingDragon, self).__init__(*args, **kw)
     # other class-specific code here, else might as well
     # just skip the initializer	

    def eat_maiden(self, maiden):
       # code here

    def fight_knight(self, knight):
       # code here

Sorry, but I don't see the benefit of your code-generator here.

>       """
>       Docstring goes here.
> 
>       @return
>       @rtype
>       """

I don't need nor want such a docstring in my code, thanks.

Don't take it bad - there are languages that requires so much 
boilerplate that without code-generators, productivity tends to drop 
near zero. But that's not the case with Python.