Question

Very often, I find myself coding trivial datatypes like

class Pruefer:
    def __init__(self, ident, maxNum=float('inf'), name=""):
        self.ident  = ident
        self.maxNum = maxNum
        self.name   = name

While this is very useful (Clearly I don’t want to replace the above with anonymous 3-tuples), it’s also very boilerplate.

Now for example, when I want to use the class in a dict, I have to add more boilerplate like

    def __hash__(self):
        return hash(self.ident, self.maxNum, self.name)

I admit that it might be difficult to recognize a general pattern amongst all my boilerplate classes, but nevertheless I’d like to as this question:

• Are there any
  popular idioms in python to derive quick and dirty datatypes with named accessors?

• Or maybe if there are not, maybe a Python guru might want to show off some metaclass hacking or class factory to make my life easier?

Answer 1

>>> from collections import namedtuple
>>> Pruefer = namedtuple("Pruefer", "ident maxNum name")
>>> pr = Pruefer(1,2,3)
>>> pr.ident
1
>>> pr.maxNum
2
>>> pr.name
3
>>> hash(pr)
2528502973977326415

To provide default values, you need to do little bit more… Simple solution is to write subclass with redefinition for __new__ method:

>>> class Pruefer(namedtuple("Pruefer", "ident maxNum name")):
...     def __new__(cls, ident, maxNum=float('inf'), name=""):
...         return super(Pruefer, cls).__new__(cls, ident, maxNum, name)
... 
>>> Pruefer(1)
Pruefer(ident=1, maxNum=inf, name='')