Question

I am trying to write a function drag which can be called as drag('Object1').to('Object2'). The code below works as I want, but it seems using a class simply as a container may be unnecessary:

def drag(source):
    class Container:
        def to(self, target):
            print 'Dragging ' + source + ' to ' + target

    return Container()

Can the above code be simplified?

Answer 1

I think you can use a class that has a source and when to is called takes a target and prints the message. You can call the class drag:

class drag:
    def __init__(self, source):
        self.source = source
    def to(self, target):
        print 'Dragging ' + self.source + ' to ' + target

Or you can use a Container class as in your code and have drag simply be a function that calls the initializer:

class Container:
    def __init__(self, source):
        self.source = source
    def to(self, target):
        print 'Dragging ' + self.source + ' to ' + target

def drag(source):
    return Container(source)

I will point out that this function doesn’t really do any thing useful, and attempting to write a useful class/function like this will make your code less clear without adding anything.