Question

I’m writing some code that takes a filename, opens the file, and parses out some data. I’d like to do this in a class. The following code works:

class MyClass():
    def __init__(self, filename):
        self.filename = filename 

        self.stat1 = None
        self.stat2 = None
        self.stat3 = None
        self.stat4 = None
        self.stat5 = None

        def parse_file():
            #do some parsing
            self.stat1 = result_from_parse1
            self.stat2 = result_from_parse2
            self.stat3 = result_from_parse3
            self.stat4 = result_from_parse4
            self.stat5 = result_from_parse5

        parse_file()

But it involves me putting all of the parsing machinery in the scope of the __init__ function for my class. That looks fine now for this simplified code, but the function parse_file has quite a few levels of indention as well. I’d prefer to define the function parse_file() as a class function like below:

class MyClass():
    def __init__(self, filename):
        self.filename = filename 

        self.stat1 = None
        self.stat2 = None
        self.stat3 = None
        self.stat4 = None
        self.stat5 = None
        parse_file()

    def parse_file():
        #do some parsing
        self.stat1 = result_from_parse1
        self.stat2 = result_from_parse2
        self.stat3 = result_from_parse3
        self.stat4 = result_from_parse4
        self.stat5 = result_from_parse5

Of course this code doesn’t work because the function parse_file() is not within the scope of the __init__ function. Is there a way to call a class function from within __init__ of that class? Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?

Answer 1

Call the function in this way:

self.parse_file()

You also need to define your parse_file() function like this:

def parse_file(self):

The parse_file method has to be bound to an object upon calling it (because it’s not a static method). This is done by calling the function on an instance of the object, in your case the instance is self.