Question

I have been reading documentation describing class inheritance, abstract base classes and even python interfaces. But nothing seams to be exactly what I want. Namely, a simple way of building virtual classes. When the virtual class gets called, I would like it to instantiate some more specific class based on what the parameters it is given and hand that back the calling function. For now I have a summary way of rerouting calls to the virtual class down to the underlying class.

The idea is the following:

class Shape:
    def __init__(self, description):
        if   description == "It's flat":  self.underlying_class = Line(description)
        elif description == "It's spiky": self.underlying_class = Triangle(description)
        elif description == "It's big":   self.underlying_class = Rectangle(description)
    def number_of_edges(self, parameters):
        return self.underlying_class(parameters)

class Line:
    def __init__(self, description):
        self.desc = description
    def number_of_edges(self, parameters):
        return 1

class Triangle:
    def __init__(self, description):
        self.desc = description
    def number_of_edges(self, parameters):
        return 3

class Rectangle:
    def __init__(self, description):
        self.desc = description
    def number_of_edges(self, parameters):
        return 4

shape_dont_know_what_it_is = Shape("It's big")
shape_dont_know_what_it_is.number_of_edges(parameters)

My rerouting is far from optimal, as only calls to the number_of_edges() function get passed on. Adding something like this to Shape doesn’t seam to do the trick either:

def __getattr__(self, *args):
    return underlying_class.__getattr__(*args)

What I am doing wrong ? Is the whole idea badly implemented ? Any help greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I would prefer doing it with a factory:

def factory(description):
    if   description == "It's flat":  return Line(description)
    elif description == "It's spiky": return Triangle(description)
    elif description == "It's big":   return Rectangle(description)

or:

def factory(description):
    classDict = {"It's flat":Line("It's flat"), "It's spiky":Triangle("It's spiky"), "It's big":Rectangle("It's big")}
    return classDict[description]

and inherit the classes from Shape

class Line(Shape):
    def __init__(self, description):
        self.desc = description
    def number_of_edges(self, parameters):
        return 1