Question

I have a class definition which defines a static method. I have a field which I would like to initialize with the static method. My default thinking led me to this:

class SomeConcreteClass(object):
    some_data = SomeConcreteClass.create_default_data()
    @staticmethod
    def create_default_data():
        return 'Foo'

The problem is that when I run this, I get a NameError: name 'SomeConcreteClass' is not defined. It makes sense as the SomeConcreteClass is just being built. Does this mean I cannot use static init functions? Is there an alternate way which is recommended to handle such a situation?

Answer 1

If some_data is exactly the output of create_default_data (and assuming the latter is deterministic in the context of your call) then why not just make some_data a @property?

class SomeConcreteClass(object):
    @property
    def some_data():
        return 'Foo'

Alternatively, but not equivalently, you could initialize some_data for each instance within __init__.