Python inheritance and calling parent class constructor

ooppython

This is what I'm trying to do in Python:

class BaseClass:
    def __init__(self):
        print 'The base class constructor ran!'
        self.__test = 42

class ChildClass(BaseClass):

    def __init__(self):
        print 'The child class constructor ran!'
        BaseClass.__init__(self)

    def doSomething(self):
        print 'Test is: ', self.__test


test = ChildClass()
test.doSomething()

Which results in:

AttributeError: ChildClass instance has no attribute '_ChildClass__test'

What gives? Why doesn't this work as I expect?

Best Answer

From python documentation:

Private name mangling: When an identifier that textually occurs in a class definition begins with two or more underscore characters and does not end in two or more underscores, it is considered a private name of that class. Private names are transformed to a longer form before code is generated for them. The transformation inserts the class name in front of the name, with leading underscores removed, and a single underscore inserted in front of the class name. For example, the identifier __spam occurring in a class named Ham will be transformed to _Ham__spam. This transformation is independent of the syntactical context in which the identifier is used. If the transformed name is extremely long (longer than 255 characters), implementation defined truncation may happen. If the class name consists only of underscores, no transformation is done.

So your attribute is not named __test but _BaseClass__test.

However you should not depend on that, use self._test instead and most python developers will know that the attribute is an internal part of the class, not the public interface.

Related Solutions

Python – the difference between old style and new style classes in Python

From New-style and classic classes:

Up to Python 2.1, old-style classes were the only flavour available to the user.

The concept of (old-style) class is unrelated to the concept of type: if x is an instance of an old-style class, then x.__class__ designates the class of x, but type(x) is always <type 'instance'>.

This reflects the fact that all old-style instances, independently of their class, are implemented with a single built-in type, called instance.

New-style classes were introduced in Python 2.2 to unify the concepts of class and type. A new-style class is simply a user-defined type, no more, no less.

If x is an instance of a new-style class, then type(x) is typically the same as x.__class__ (although this is not guaranteed – a new-style class instance is permitted to override the value returned for x.__class__).

The major motivation for introducing new-style classes is to provide a unified object model with a full meta-model.

It also has a number of immediate benefits, like the ability to subclass most built-in types, or the introduction of "descriptors", which enable computed properties.

For compatibility reasons, classes are still old-style by default.

New-style classes are created by specifying another new-style class (i.e. a type) as a parent class, or the "top-level type" object if no other parent is needed.

The behaviour of new-style classes differs from that of old-style classes in a number of important details in addition to what type returns.

Some of these changes are fundamental to the new object model, like the way special methods are invoked. Others are "fixes" that could not be implemented before for compatibility concerns, like the method resolution order in case of multiple inheritance.

Python 3 only has new-style classes.

No matter if you subclass from object or not, classes are new-style in Python 3.

Python – Are static class variables possible in Python

Variables declared inside the class definition, but not inside a method are class or static variables:

>>> class MyClass:
...     i = 3
...
>>> MyClass.i
3

As @millerdev points out, this creates a class-level i variable, but this is distinct from any instance-level i variable, so you could have

>>> m = MyClass()
>>> m.i = 4
>>> MyClass.i, m.i
>>> (3, 4)

This is different from C++ and Java, but not so different from C#, where a static member can't be accessed using a reference to an instance.

See what the Python tutorial has to say on the subject of classes and class objects.

@Steve Johnson has already answered regarding static methods, also documented under "Built-in Functions" in the Python Library Reference.

class C:
    @staticmethod
    def f(arg1, arg2, ...): ...

@beidy recommends classmethods over staticmethod, as the method then receives the class type as the first argument, but I'm still a little fuzzy on the advantages of this approach over staticmethod. If you are too, then it probably doesn't matter.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Python – the difference between old style and new style classes in Python

Python – Are static class variables possible in Python

Related Topic