Question

I am dynamically creating some classes and I want them to have different docstrings. I have:

def make_class(class_docstring):
    class X:
        pass
    X.__doc__ = class_docstring
    return X

That didn’t work because docstrings are read-only. Then, I tried:

def make_class(class_name, class_docstring):
    class X:
        def __init__(self):
            super().__init__()

    d = {'__doc__': class_docstring}
    d.update(X.__dict__)
    return type(class_name, (), d)

ClassName = make_class(
    'ClassName',
    """
    Some docstring...
    """)

which worked until it had to call super.

What is the correct way to dynamically set the docstring attribute?

Answer 1

You can set the docstring inside the class.

>>> def make_class(class_docstring):
...     class X:
...         __doc__ = class_docstring
...     return X
...
>>> x = make_class('test doc')
>>> x
<class '__main__.X'>
>>> xx = x()
>>> xx.__doc__
'test doc'

I’m not sure why your 2nd attempt is failing.