[Tutor] Good approach regarding classes attributes

[Peter Otten]

Juan Christian wrote:

> I'm writing a program that have a 'User' class. This class will have the
> following attributes:
> 
> 1. id
> 2. personaname
> 3. lastlogoff
> 4. profileurl
> 5. avatar
> 6. realname
> 7. timecreated
> 8. loccountrycode
> 
> I'm thinking about writing something like that:

> class User():
>  
>     def __init__(id):
>         self.__id = id
>        
>         [URL Request to call API and get everything using the ID (JSON)]
>  
>         self.__personaname = [JSON response personaname]

>         [...]
>  
>     def get_id():
>         return __id
>  
>     def get_personaname():
>         return __personaname
>  
>     [...]

> Is it a good approach, is this phytonic?

It's not a good approach and it's not pythonic.

In Python you should avoid accessor functions and (pseudo-)private 
__attributes ("Python is not Java"). So

class User:
    def __init__(self, id):
        self.id = id
        # load attributes
        self.personname = [personname from JSON] 
        ... 

user = User(42)

is certainly better. You might also consider making the class less dependent 
of the way you acquire the corresponding data:

class User: # in Python 2: class User(object): ...
    def __init__(self, id, personname, ...)
        self.id = id
        self.personname = personname
        ...
    @classmethod
    def from_id(class_, id):
        # load attributes
        return User(id, personname, ...)

jeff = User(42, "Jeff", ...)
jack = User.from_id(43)