Question

I’m running Pylint on some code, and receiving the error "Too few public methods (0/2)". What does this message mean?

The Pylint documentation is not helpful:

Used when a class has too few public methods, so be sure it’s really worth it.

Answer 1

The error basically says that classes aren’t meant to just store data, as you’re basically treating the class as a dictionary. Classes should have at least a few methods to operate on the data that they hold.

If your class looks like this:

class MyClass(object):
    def __init__(self, foo, bar):
        self.foo = foo
        self.bar = bar

Consider using a dictionary or a namedtuple instead. Although if a class seems like the best choice, use it. Pylint doesn’t always know what’s best.

Do note that namedtuple is immutable and the values assigned on instantiation cannot be modified later.