Question

In C-ish languages, I’d mask data storage details with getter/setter methods/functions like:

int getFoo();
void setFoo(int value);

I have some Python that does:

class MyClass:
    def Foo(self):
        ...magic to access foo...
        return value

What’s the right way to write/name a setter for Foo? I’m sure it’s more idiom than language feature but I’m not sure what’s common. Maybe I need to rename Foo() to getFoo() and match it with setFoo(). I guess that’s OK if that’s what is usually done.

Answer 1

Use the builtin property function:

class MyClass:

    def __init__(self):
        self._value = 'Initialize self._value with some value or None'        

    def get_foo(self):
        ...magic to access foo...
        return self._value

    def set_foo(self, value):
        ... magic processing for value ...
        self._value = value

    foo = property(get_foo, set_foo)

Now you can use access it like this:

inst = MyClass()
inst.foo = 'Some value'
print inst.foo

It will print:

‘Some value’