[Tutor] question about __init__ in a class

[Andreas Kostyrka]

* shawn bright <nephish at gmail.com> [061113 19:46]:
> Hello there all.
> i have a class that i need to load some class variables depending on what is
> passed to the class, it would either be set up using one variable or
> another. The values for the class variables would be loaded from a database.
> But how it is looked up depends on how its called. Like this:
> 
> class Sensor_Object(object):
>    def __init__(self, id, monitor):
>        if id:
>           self.id = id
>           load values from the database
>           value1 = somevalue
>           value2 = someOthervalue
>        else:
>           self.monitor = monitor
>           get some values from database
>           value1 = somevalue
>           value2 = someothervalue
> 
> now i could call it like this:
> 
> new_monitor = sensor.Sensor('', 'XJ191')
> or
> new_monitor = sensor.Sensor('3433', '')
> to load based on the other variable.
> 
> i think that this would work, but i was thinking that there must be a
> cleaner way to do it.

Well, the code is basically ok, but I'd propose the following (it will
help using the instances):

class Sensor_Object(object):
    sensid = None
    monitor = None

    ...

Basically, provide class variables shadowing your "main" instance
attributes. I've also renamed id to sensid as id is an builtin
function. (it's legal and ok to use id, but some tools like pylint
like to complain about that style of shadowing.)

The benefit is easy, in other methods, you can use code like this:
    if self.sensid is not None:
 instead of the more clumsy
    if hasattr(self, "sensid"):
 
Andreas

> any suggestions ?
> 
> sk

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