Multiple constructors: the Pythonic way? [duplicate]

You can’t have multiple methods with same name in Python. Function overloading – unlike in Java – isn’t supported.

Use default parameters or **kwargs and *args arguments.

You can make static methods or class methods with the @staticmethod or @classmethod decorator to return an instance of your class, or to add other constructors.

I advise you to do:

class F:

    def __init__(self, timestamp=0, data=None, metadata=None):
        self.timestamp = timestamp
        self.data = list() if data is None else data
        self.metadata = dict() if metadata is None else metadata

    @classmethod
    def from_file(cls, path):
       _file = cls.get_file(path)
       timestamp = _file.get_timestamp()
       data = _file.get_data()
       metadata = _file.get_metadata()       
       return cls(timestamp, data, metadata)

    @classmethod
    def from_metadata(cls, timestamp, data, metadata):
        return cls(timestamp, data, metadata)

    @staticmethod
    def get_file(path):
        # ...
        pass

⚠ Never have mutable types as defaults in python. ⚠
See here.