Does there exist special class in python to create empty objects? I tried object(), but it didn't allow me to add fields. I want to use it like this:
obj = EmptyObject()
obj.foo = 'far'
obj.bar = 'boo'
Should I each time(in several independent scripts) define new class like this?
class EmptyObject:
pass
I use python2.7
types.SimpleNamespace was introduced with Python 3.3 to serve this exact purpose. The documentation also shows a simple way to implement it yourself in Python, so you can add it to your pre-Python 3.3 setup and use it as if it was there (note that the actual implementation is done in C):
class SimpleNamespace (object):
def __init__ (self, **kwargs):
self.__dict__.update(kwargs)
def __repr__ (self):
keys = sorted(self.__dict__)
items = ("{}={!r}".format(k, self.__dict__[k]) for k in keys)
return "{}({})".format(type(self).__name__, ", ".join(items))
def __eq__ (self, other):
return self.__dict__ == other.__dict__
But of course, if you don’t need its few features, a simple class Empty: pass does just the same.
If you are looking for a place holder object to which you can add arbitrary static members, then the closest I got is an empty lambda function.
obj = lambda: None # Dummy function
obj.foo = 'far'
obj.bar = 'boo'
print obj.foo, obj.bar
# far boo
Remember: obj is not an object of a class, object doesn't mean class instance, because in Python classes and functions are objects at runtime just like class instances
lambda: 0. I'd not use it still though, as this makes it hard to figure out why you'd create the lambda in the first place.
There is no types.SimpleNamespace in Python 2.7, you could use collections.namedtuple() for immutable objects instead:
>>> from collections import namedtuple
>>> FooBar = namedtuple('FooBar', 'foo bar')
>>> FooBar('bar', 'foo')
FooBar(foo='bar', bar='foo')
Or argparse.Namespace:
>>> from argparse import Namespace
>>> o = Namespace(foo='bar')
>>> o.bar = 'foo'
>>> o
Namespace(bar='foo', foo='bar')
See also, How can I create an object and add attributes to it?
You can create a new type dynamically with the fields you want it to have using the type function, like this:
x = type('empty', (object,), {'foo': 'bar'})
x.bar = 3
print(x.foo)
This is not entirely what you want though, since it will have a custom type, not an empty type.
importto obtain an existingEmptyObject, the net savings would be minor.