Python, creating objects

by 
class Student(object):
    name = ""
    age = 0
    major = ""

    # The class "constructor" - It's actually an initializer 
    def __init__(self, name, age, major):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.major = major

def make_student(name, age, major):
    student = Student(name, age, major)
    return student

Note that even though one of the principles in Python’s philosophy is “there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it”, there are still multiple ways to do this. You can also use the two following snippets of code to take advantage of Python’s dynamic capabilities:

class Student(object):
    name = ""
    age = 0
    major = ""

def make_student(name, age, major):
    student = Student()
    student.name = name
    student.age = age
    student.major = major
    # Note: I didn't need to create a variable in the class definition before doing this.
    student.gpa = float(4.0)
    return student

I prefer the former, but there are instances where the latter can be useful – one being when working with document databases like MongoDB.

Leave a Comment