Question

I want to do a one time callback registration within Observer. I don’t want to do the registration inside init or other function. I don’t know if there is a class level equivalent for init

    class Observer:

        @classmethod
        def on_new_user_registration(new_user):
            #body of handler...

        # first I try

        NewUserRegistered().subscribe \
          (Observer.on_new_user_registration) #gives NameError for Observer

        #so I try

        NewUserRegistered().subscribe(on_new_user_registration) #says not callable

        #neither does this work

        NewUserRegistered().subscribe(__metaclass__.on_new_user_registration)


class BaseEvent(object):
    _subscriptions = {}

    def __init__(self, event_info = None):
        self.info = event_info

    def fire(self):
        for callback in self._subscriptions[event_type]:
            callback(event_info)

    def subscribe(self, callback):
        if not callable(callback):
            raise Exception(str(callback) + 'is not callable')
        existing = self._subscriptions.get(self.__class__, None)
        if not existing:
            existing = set()
            self._subscriptions[self.__class__] = existing
        existing.add(callback)

    class NewUserRegistered(BaseEvent):
        pass

Answer 1

I’ve come to accept that python isn’t very intuitive when it comes to functional programming within class definitions. See this question. The problem with the first method is that Observer doesn’t exist as a namespace until the class has been built. The problem with the second is that you’ve made a class method that doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to until after the namespace has been created. (I have no idea why you’re trying the third.) In both case neither of these things occurs until after the class definition of Observer has been populated.

This might sound like a sad constraint, but it’s really not so bad. Just register after the class definition. Once you realize that it’s not bad style to perform certain initialization routines on classes in the body of the module but outside the body of the class, python becomes a lot friendlier. Try:
class Observer:

# Define the other classes first

class Observer:
    @classmethod
    def on_new_user_registration(new_user):
        #body of handler...
NewUserRegistered().subscribe(Observer.on_new_user_registration)

Because of the way modules work in python, you are guaranteed that this registration will be performed once and only once (barring process forking and maybe some other irrelevant boundary cases) wherever Observer is imported.