Intro to Object Oriented Programming (OOP)#
Objects as collections of data and functions#
An object is simply a collection of data and functions that operate on that data.
For example, let’s say we wanted to represent our home directory as an object. It might look something like this:
This object holds a single data “member” (named string_location), and has a
function, called a “method”, to see if the directory exists.
We could produce lots of these, each with different string_location values,
and we could use them in our code to track directories and see if they exist.
All of these objects are interchangeable, and all of them have identical
functions - only the contents of the data are different. This suggests we could
make a further improvement to the model. (Unless we were in JavaScript, by the
way, where this really is how objects were implemented!)
To ensure we make exactly the same structure of object, we could make a templating function that “constructs” the same sort of object. Classic JavaScript (before ES6 in 2015) does exactly this. We will quickly upgrade this idea to something much nicer and more native to Python! But let’s just try it out to illustrate the point:
import os
from types import SimpleNamespace
def make_path(string_location):
self = SimpleNamespace()
self.string_location = string_location
self.exists = lambda: os.path.exists(string_location)
return self
my_dir = make_path("my/dir")
print(f"{my_dir.string_location = }")
print(f"{my_dir.exists() = }")
my_dir.string_location = 'my/dir'
my_dir.exists() = False
Again, don’t do this in Python! There’s a better way. But you’ll see it’s not so different. The key feature is is we are “templating” new object creation to ensure they all have the attributes we require. As you’ll see, languages formalize this in something called “constructors”.
There’s one other issue above. We make a brand new function exists every
single object we create. If exists simply had access to the object it was
being called from, you could make it completely generic and just share it
between all objects that are “similar”. But first, let’s formalize “similar”!
Classes#
People like to categorize things; it helps us think. If I asked you what Bluey was, you would say she’s a dog (at least if you are around small children and have seen the show). We would say Bluey is an object, an instance of a dog, a class (we capitalize instances and classes backwards from English).
In our example, we want a concept for the type of thing that make_path
produced, and my_dir was an instance of - we’ll call it Path - that’s the
class.
Here’s what making such a class looks like in several languages:
import os
class Path:
def __init__(self, string_location):
self.string_location = string_location
def exists(self):
return os.path.exists(self.string_location)
import os
import dataclasses
@dataclasses.dataclass
class Path:
string_location: str
def exists(self):
return os.path.exists(self.string_location)
#include <filesystem>
#include <string>
class Path {
public:
std::string string_location;
Path(std::string string_location) : string_location(string_location) {}
bool exists() const {
const std::filesystem::path path_location{string_location};
return std::filesystem::exists(path_location);
}
};
classdef Path
properties
string_location
end
methods
function obj = Path(string_location)
obj.string_location = string_location;
end
function res = exists()
res = isfile(filename)
end
end
end
class Path
attr_accessor :string_location
def initialize(string_location)
@string_location = string_location
end
def exists?
Path.exists? @string_location
end
end
const fs = require("fs");
class Path {
constructor(string_location) {
this.string_location = string_location;
}
exists() {
return fs.existsSync(path);
}
}
use std::fs;
struct Path {
string_location: &'static str
}
impl Path {
fn new(value: &'static str) -> Self {
Path { string_location: value }
}
fn exists(&self) -> bool {
fs::metadata(self.string_location).is_ok()
}
}
This gives us several benefits: If we get a Path, we know it has
string_location and exists(). We no longer need an exists function on
every instance, we can define it on the class, and Python’s syntax will help us
use it. Python provides a handy shortcut for calling Path.exists(instance);
you can just call instance.exists() instead, and it passes the instance in as
the first value to the function (traditionally called self).
In real world classes, each instance will contain multiple attributes and
methods that use those attributes. By bundling the data and methods together,
you limit namespace pollution and lessen the mental load required to use those
methods. Think of a FileSystem class with several Path attributes for
documents, downloads, backups, etc. A method like backup_home in such a class
would require no arguments; in a non-OOP implementation, each path would need a
unique variable name to track what it contains.
The “template” function in this case was __init__. In this function, you get
the new, empty class and you have to add the members manually, just like in our
template example. This will always run when classes are constructed, and it gets
the arguments used to make the class, too.
You can access the class that an object belongs to with .__class__.
self.__class__.__name__ is a common trick for getting the name of the class.
Subclassing#
We can take our analogy one step further. Bluey is a dog, and a dog is an animal. We like to have sets of broader and broader labels. Only Bluey is an instance, so dog is a subclass of animal (or animal is a parent class of dog). You could have as many of these as you wanted - for example, maybe Bluey is actually an instance of “blue healer”, which is a subclass of dog.
When Python looks up something on a class, it goes through the “Method Resolution Order”. The procedure to look up an attribute access looks something like this:
First, is it in contained in home_directory? No, then is it contained in
Path? The final look up is in object, which is the implicit parent at the
top of all MRO’s.
class Animal:
def eat(self, food):
print(f"{self.__class__.__name__} eating {food}")
class Dog(Animal):
pass
bluey = Dog()
bluey.eat("fruit")
Dog eating fruit
Notice that self.__class__ inside eat was Dog, even though we defined the
method on Animal. That’s because self was bluey, which is an instance of
Dog.
We can override a method if we want:
class Raccoon(Animal):
def eat(self, food):
print("Washing first")
super().eat(food)
rascal = Raccoon()
rascal.eat("berries")
Washing first
Raccoon eating berries
In this case, all Animals can eat - if you know you take an Animal, you know
it can eat. However, Raccoon has have a custom eat function. It has the same
signature (important!), but it does a bit more. This is also how Python calls a
method from the “class above”, by using super(). You could have also said
Animal.eat(self, food) here, but super() is better.
An important feature of subclassing is instance checks. rascal, above, is both
an instance of Raccoon and of Animal.
print(f"{isinstance(rascal, Raccoon)}")
print(f"{isinstance(rascal, Animal)}")
True
True
You can look up the exact method resolution order by looking at __mro__:
print(f"{Raccoon.__mro__ = }")
Raccoon.__mro__ = (<class '__main__.Raccoon'>, <class '__main__.Animal'>, <class 'object'>)
This is how error catching works in Python. If you see custom errors, they often have no members or methods at all; they are just utilizing this inheritance concept!
print(f"{KeyError.__mro__ = }")
KeyError.__mro__ = (<class 'KeyError'>, <class 'LookupError'>, <class 'Exception'>, <class 'BaseException'>, <class 'object'>)
This means you’ll catch a KeyError if you ask for a KeyError, LookupError,
or an Exception! (Or a BaseException, but don’t ask for that, too general,
catches things like MemoryError too!)
Many novice object oriented programmers are tempted to use subclassing for every object relationship. Often, it is more appropriate (and easier to read and write) if objects are composed with one another, instead of inherit from one another. Remember, inheritance indicates an “is a” relationship. Subclasses can specialize, but if you are overriding every method of a superclass with distinct implementations you aren’t really inheriting anything.
Multiple inheritance#
If one parent is good, why not allow more? Some languages allow you to combine multiple classes into one child - this is called multiple inheritance. It is quite tricky to get right, and there are a host of potential issues (Which method do you call if both parents have it? What happens if you get a diamond pattern by having both parents share a common parent? Etc.). However, if you restrict multiple inheritance to a specific subset of uses, it can be very powerful. Python, Matlab, and C++ allow multiple inheritance. Ruby doesn’t, but it has an alternative more limited mechanism that covers the usage we cover in the next chapters.
One suggestion to make sure you are as ready as possible: always use super()
to call a parent method; don’t just manually name the parent. There are special
mechanisms in super that kick in if you have multiple parents. In short, always
check the __mro__; that’s always linear and super will always go up the
__mro__.
Abstract base classes and interfaces#
When designing with inheritance in mind, you might want to require a method be
implemented in all subclasses. For example, if you had a Vector class with
Vector2D and Vector3D subclasses, you might want to require all subclasses
define mag2 (the squared magnitude). You can do this with the abc module:
import abc
class Vector(abc.ABC):
@abc.abstractmethod
def mag2(self):
pass
def mag(self):
return self.mag2() ** 0.5
The abc.ABC class is a convenience class; you can also use
class Vector(metaclass=abc.ABCMeta) instead to avoid inheritance on this
convenience class. We won’t be discussing metaclasses, so just briefly they
customize class creation rather than instance creation (everything is an
object, even classes!). ABCs inject checks to all the child classes so that when
you create an instance, they see if any abstract components are missing from the
class. If you never make an instance, you can have abstract methods. Above,
Vector is called an abstract class, since you can’t make instances of it.
However, you can make a concrete class from it:
@dataclasses.dataclass
class Vector2D(Vector):
x: float
y: float
def mag2(self):
return self.x**2 + self.y**2
Since we have provided concrete definitions for all abstract methods in
Vector2D, we can instantiated it at use it:
assert Vector2D(3, 4).mag() == 5
Notice that we can provide concrete methods in an abstract class, and we can
even provide helper code in the abstract methods that can be accessed via
super(). The only rule is no abstract methods can be exposed directly in a
class that gets instantiated.
Notice what this means for a user. If a user knows they have a Vector, they
can now use .mag() and .mag2() without worrying which Vector they have. We
call this an Interface. When we get to static typing, we will discuss a way to
formalize this in Python without ABCs (hint: it will be called Protocols).
Python actually has dozens of Interfaces, many of which are in
collections.abc. For example, the Sized Interface is basically this:
class Sized(abc.ABC):
@abc.abstractmethod
def __len__(self):
pass
However, the implementation doesn’t really matter for an Interface; you don’t
have to inherit from an Interface to implement it. In fact, Python will even
report any instance of a class that defined __len__ as
isinstance(..., collections.abc.Sized), regardless of whether it actually
inherits from this ABC! This is called structural subtyping, and it solves one
of the big drawbacks we’ve been seeing with subclassing, the loss of modularity.
Users of a Interface simply use ducktyping and access the methods that they
support. In the case of Sized, len(x) works on Sized, which just simply
calls x.__len__(). There are
lots of other, more
complex Interfaces, such as Iterable (for loops and such). Most of the ones in
Python use dunder names. This is because Python reserves all dunder names for
it’s own use, but some libraries (especially large, older libraries!) do define
new ones, almost always for Interfaces.
At this point, an ABC is well defined (we have seen how to make one in code),
but an Interface is a concept, an agreement between implementer and caller. We
fill formalize this later when we get to static typing with Protocols.
Special methods#
We’ve already seen a special method in Python: __init__. You can customize
almost every aspect of the behavior with special methods; it’s easier to go over
what you can’t do than what you can. You can’t change assignment, and/or
behavior (due to short-circuiting logic and some limitations that might be
removed in the future). That’s about it, almost every other behavior can be
changed.
One point to note about special behavior: Python shortcuts the object lookup check for special operations, meaning the operation must be defined in the class or immediate super class.
Here are a few to give you a taste of what is available
__add__/__sub__/__mul__/__truediv__: The standard math operators.__iadd__/__isub__/__imul__/__itruediv__: Inplace versions of math operators.__radd__/__rsub__/__rmul__/__rtruediv__: Reversed versions of math operators. These are called if the first operator is not a member of this class.__eq__/__neq__/__lt__/…: The comparison operators. You can just specify two and then let@functools.totalorderinggenerate the rest for you.__repr__/__str__: Controls hows the object is printed. Unlike some other languages, Python allows customizing the repr (“programmer view”) and the str (“user view”).
Want more? There are many, many more, handling other operators, conversion to various things, indexing, attribute access, you name it. The Python Data Model describes all of them.
Other languages have equivalents. C++ uses operator + as the function name,
for example. Matlab uses normal names like plus (AFAIK, it’s the only one not
to call this add) Ruby allows almost anything as a function name, so it uses
the operator by itself as the function name. JavaScript is the only one with no
operator overloading at all (and ironically, the defaults are horrible, with
"1" - 2 producing 3). It still has some special named methods, though.
Dataclasses#
If you look at other languages, you’ll notice that some other languages
(especially compiled ones) have a nice way of declaring exactly what members the
classes are allowed to have. While there is a trick to force the attributes to
be limited to a pre-defined collection in Python (look up __slots__ and
__dict__, but it’s a bit involved), what we’d like is that nice syntax -
init is very repetitive to write, especially for the common use case of
classes as “data + functions”. Python has a trick to write this very nicely
these days:
from dataclasses import dataclass
@dataclasses.dataclass
class Vector:
x: float
y: float
from typing import Any
class Vector:
__match_args__ = ("x", "y")
def __init__(self, x: float, y: float) -> None:
self.x = x
self.y = y
def __repr__(self):
return f"{self.__class__.__name__}(x={self.x!r}, y={self.y!r})"
def __eq__(self, other):
if other.__class__ is self.__class__:
return (self.x, self.y) == (other.x, other.y)
return NotImplemented
def __replace__(self, **kwargs):
return self.__class__(**(self.__dict__ | kwargs))
__hash__ = None
You can use the toggle to see what dataclasses automatically generates for you.
I’ve included type annotations, because dataclasses include them for free -
we’ll cover those later. You get a free __init__, __repr__, and __eq__. If
you add options to the decorator, you can generate even more useful things.
order=True will generate all the ordering methods. frozen=True will make the
members unsettable by wrapping every member with a property (a non-trivial
amount of code!) and will generate a __hash__ as well. Python 3.10 added two
more fantastic options, slots=True and kw_only=True, too. Notice the
__match_args__ that got added for free in Python 3.10; you get free improved
support for Python 3.10 pattern matching just by using dataclasses. The same
thing happened again for 3.13 and the copy.replace() protocol __replace__.
You can use undataclasses to see
exactly what dataclasses is supposed to be doing for you. (It’s recomputed, so
could be slightly off. __hash__ = None is missing, along with
__replace__.)
The dataclasses module has other useful tools in it, as well. You have tools
to control each field when you define them. You also have a way to iterate over
all the fields. There’s a tool to convert to a dict or a tuple; dicts can be
then combined with other libraries like the json library. And there’s a
dataclass.replace function that will make a new dataclass but with a subset of
fields replaced, which can help you “modify” a frozen instance by making a new
one. (This is identical to copy.replace in Python 3.13+ but only works on
dataclasses and is available and any version of Python with dataclasses.)
Dataclasses are a really great way to use OOP as data + actions (which is a
really important usage) without having to learn or write a lot of boilerplate.
But you also get one more feature: dataclasses are a standard. Other third-party
tools can detect them using dataclasses.is_dataclass(...), and work with them.
The rich library can pretty-print their reprs. The cattrs library has tools
to convert - you can get modularity and separation of concerns by building a
cattrs converter separate from your dataclass.
Example of using dataclasses#
Let’s just look at how dataclasses can transform the way you think. We have an example of reading an JSON file, but we’ll try a bit of a fancier one:
Input JSON#
{ "size": 100, "name": "Test", "simulation": true, "details": { "info": "Something or other" }, "duration": 10.0 }
Dataclass schema#
If you’d like to read that into a structure, you could manually implement all that code imperatively. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could just declare the data structure as it is, something like this:
import dataclasses
@dataclasses.dataclass
class Details:
info: str
@dataclasses.dataclass
class Run:
size: int
name: str
simulation: bool
details: Details
duration: float
Conversion from JSON#
And then implement it’s conversion separately (modular design!)? Well, this is a
standard, introspectable structure, so there’s a third party library for
converting them called cattrs:
from cattrs.preconf.json import make_converter
converter = make_converter()
data = converter.structure(json_contents, Run)
print(data)
Run(size=100, name='Test', simulation=True, details=Details(info='Something or other'), duration=10.0)
Pretty printing#
We can also use another third party library, rich, to provide a rich, colorful
display of dataclasses:
from rich import print
print(data)
Run( size=100, name='Test', simulation=True, details=Details(info='Something or other'), duration=10.0 )
Quick conversion to dicts/tuples#
And we can use the built-in tools to quickly convert dataclasses to dicts & tuples, recursively:
print(dataclasses.asdict(data))
{ 'size': 100, 'name': 'Test', 'simulation': True, 'details': {'info': 'Something or other'}, 'duration': 10.0 }
print(dataclasses.astuple(data))
(100, 'Test', True, ('Something or other',), 10.0)