Question

Is it possible, when instantiating an object, to pass-in a class which the object should derive from?

For instance:

class Red(object):
    def x(self):
        print '#F00'

class Blue(object):
    def x(self):
        print '#00F'

class Circle(object):
    def __init__(self, parent):
        # here, we set Bar's parent to `parent`
        self.x()

class Square(object):
    def __init__(self, parent):
        # here, we set Bar's parent to `parent`
        self.x()
        self.sides = 4

red_circle = Circle(parent=Red)
blue_circle = Circle(parent=Blue)
blue_square = Square(parent=Blue)

Which would have similar effects as:

class Circle(Red):
    def __init__(self):
        self.x()

without, however, affecting other instances of Circle.

Answer 1

I agree with @AntsAasma. You should probably consider using dependency injection. Atleast in the example given (which I’m sure is greatly simplified to illustrate your problem), the color of a shape is better represented by via a has-a relationship rather than with a is-a relationship.

You could implement this via passing in the desired color object to the constructor, storing a reference to it, and delegating the function call to this object. This greatly simplifies the implementation while still retaining the desired behavior. See an example here:

class Red(object):
    def x(self):
        print '#F00'

class Blue(object):
    def x(self):
        print '#00F'

class Shape(object):
    def __init__(self,color):
        self._color=color
    def x(self):
        return self._color.x()

class Circle(Shape):
    def __init__(self, color):
        Shape.__init__(self,color)
        self.x()

class Square(Shape):
    def __init__(self, color):
        Shape.__init__(self,color)
        self.x()
        self.sides = 4

red_circle = Circle(color=Red())
blue_circle = Circle(color=Blue())
blue_square = Square(color=Blue())

Edit: Fixed names of constructor arguments in sample code