Question

As python does not have concept of constants, would it be possible to raise an exception if an ‘constant’ attribute is updated? How?

class MyClass():
    CLASS_CONSTANT = 'This is a constant'
    var = 'This is a not a constant, can be updated'

#this should raise an exception    
MyClass.CLASS_CONSTANT = 'No, this cannot be updated, will raise an exception'

#this should not raise an exception    
MyClass.var = 'updating this is fine'

#this also should raise an exception    
MyClass().CLASS_CONSTANT = 'No, this cannot be updated, will raise an exception'

#this should not raise an exception    
MyClass().var = 'updating this is fine'

Any attempt to change CLASS_CONSTANT as a class attribute or as an instance attribute should raise an exception.

Changing var as a class attribute or as an instance attribute should not raise an exception.

Answer 1

Customizing __setattr__ in every class (e.g. as exemplified in my old recipe that @ainab’s answer is pointing to, and other answers), only works to stop assignment to INSTANCE attributes and not to CLASS attributes. So, none of the existing answers would actually satisfy your requirement as stated.

If what you asked for IS actually exactly what you want, you could resort to some mix of custom metaclasses and descriptors, such as:

class const(object):
  def __init__(self, val): self.val = val
  def __get__(self, *_): return self.val
  def __set__(self, *_): raise TypeError("Can't reset const!")

class mcl(type):
  def __init__(cls, *a, **k):
    mkl = cls.__class__
    class spec(mkl): pass
    for n, v in vars(cls).items():
      if isinstance(v, const):
        setattr(spec, n, v)
    spec.__name__ = mkl.__name__
    cls.__class__ = spec

class with_const:
  __metaclass__ = mcl

class foo(with_const):
  CLASS_CONSTANT = const('this is a constant')

print foo().CLASS_CONSTANT
print foo.CLASS_CONSTANT
foo.CLASS_CONSTANT = 'Oops!'
print foo.CLASS_CONSTANT

This is pretty advanced stuff, so you might prefer the simpler __setattr__ approach suggested in other answers, despite it NOT meeting your requirements as stated (i.e., you might reasonably choose to weaken your requirements in order to gain simplicity;-). But the techniques here might still be interesting: the custom descriptor type const is another way (IMHO far nicer than overriding __setattr__ in each and every class that needs some constants AND making all attributes constants rather than picking and choosing…) to block assignment to an instance attribute; the rest of the code is about a custom metaclass creating unique per-class sub-metaclasses of itself, in order to exploit said custom descriptor to the fullest and achieving the exact functionality you specifically asked for.