Question

In the code below the User class needs to access a function get_user inside an instance of WebService class, as that contains other functions required for authentication with the web server (last.fm). Actual code is here.

class WebService:

    def __init__(self, key):
        self.apikey = key

    def get_user(self, name):
        pass # Omitted

class User:

    def __init__(self, name, webservice):
        self.name = name
        self.ws = webservice

    def fill_profile(self):
        data = self.ws.GetUser(self.name)
        # Omitted

The problem is that a reference needs to be held inside every ´User´. Is there another way of doing this? Or is it just me overcomplicating things, and this is how it actually works in the real world?

Answer 1

As requested:
As to handling things like get_top_albums and get_friends, that depends on how you want to model the system. If you don’t want to cache the data locally, I’d say just call the service each time with a user ID. If you do want to cache the data locally, you could pass a User object to the method in WebService, then have the method populate the members of the User. You do have to make a design decision though to either have a WebService and a User (what would probably be best), or just a UserWebService.