Beginning Python - From Novice to Professional

174 CHAPTER 9 ■ MAGIC METHODS, PROPERTIES, AND ITERATORS
class NewStyle(object):
more_code_here
class OldStyle:
more_code_here
Of these two, NewStyle is a new-style class, while OldStyle is an old-style class.
■Note Rather than subclass a built-in type, you can make sure you’re using the same metaclass as they
do. Metaclasses are the classes of other classes (or types)—a rather advanced topic. However, you can use
the built-in metaclass called type to create new-style classes rather easily. Either you put the following
assignment in the top-level scope of your module (close to the top), or in the class-scope of your class:
__metaclass__ = type
Putting it at the beginning of a module makes it easy to make all your classes new-style. For more information
on metaclasses, you can take a look at the (somewhat technical) article called “Unifying types and classes in
Python 2.2” by Guido van Rossum (http://python.org/2.2/descrintro.html), or you can do a Web
search for the term “python metaclasses.”
In this book, I have taken the conservative approach of subclassing object only where it is
needed (because object did not exist before version 2.2), but if you do not specifically have to
make your programs compatible with old versions of Python, I would advise you to make all
your classes new-style, and consistently use features such as the super function (described in
the section “Using the super Function,” later in this chapter).
Constructors
The first magic method we’ll take a look at is the constructor. In case you have never heard the
word “constructor” before, it’s basically a fancy name for the kind of initializing method I have
already used in some of the examples, under the name init. What separates constructors from
ordinary methods, however, is that the constructors are called automatically right after an object
has been created. Thus, instead of doing what I’ve been doing up until now:
>>> f = FooBar()
>>> f.init()
constructors make it possible to simply do this:
>>> f = FooBar()
Creating constructors in Python is really easy; simply change the init method’s name
from the plain old init to the magic version, __init__: