Class or Dictionary?

[Martin De Kauwe]

On Feb 13, 6:35 pm, Terry Reedy <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 2/12/2011 9:20 PM, Martin De Kauwe wrote:
>
> > On Feb 13, 5:12 am, Terry Reedy<tjre... at udel.edu>  wrote:
> >> On 2/12/2011 1:24 AM, Martin De Kauwe wrote:
>
> >>> The point of this posting was just to ask those that know, whether it
> >>> was a bad idea to use the class object in the way I had or was that
> >>> OK? And if I should have just used a dictionary, why?
>
> >> Did you miss my suggestion to use a module rather than a class?
> >> Modules do not have some of the disadvantages of classes listed by J. Nagle.
>
> >> --
> >> Terry Jan Reedy
>
> > Hi, sorry I did. I just re-read it, could you provide an example?
>
> I am not sure what you are asking. tkinter.contants is one example.
>
> > Sorry i am having a major mind blank this morning (I think this is
> > obvious!?). And it would meet all of the criteria outlined by John
> > Nagle?
>
> A module will work fine if but only if you commit yourself to having all
> keys be legal Python identifiers. But that is usually not a problem with
> configuration values.
>
> --
> Terry Jan Reedy

I think I got it, did you mean something like this?


class Constants:

    radius_of_earth = 6.37122E+6
    days_as_yrs = 1.0 / 365.25
    m2_as_ha = 1E-4  # metres squared as hectares
    g_as_tonnes = 1E-6  # grammes as tonnes
    kg_as_tonnes = 1E-3  # kg as tonnes
    kg_as_g = 1E+3

    def __init__(self):

        self.radius_of_earth = self.__class__.radius_of_earth
        self.days_as_yrs = self.__class__.days_as_yrs
        self.m2_as_ha = self.__class__.m2_as_ha
        self.g_as_tonnes = self.__class__.g_as_tonnes
        self.kg_as_tonnes = self.__class__.kg_as_tonnes
        self.kg_as_g = self.__class__.kg_as_g


usage something like

>>>from constants import Constants
>>>Constants.kg_as_g
>>>1000.0

Something similar for the params?

thanks