Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

Symbolic enumeration with the enum module

One of the special handy types found in the Python standard is the Enum class from the enum module. This is a base class that allows you to define symbolic enumerations, similar in concept to the enumerated types found in many other programming languages (C, C++, C#, Java, and many more) that are often denoted with the enum keyword.

In order to define your own enumeration in Python, you will need to subclass the Enum class and define all enumeration members as class attributes. The following is an example of a simple Python enum:

from enum import Enumclass Weekday(Enum):
    MONDAY = 0
    TUESDAY = 1
    WEDNESDAY = 2
    THURSDAY = 3    FRIDAY = 4    SATURDAY = 5    SUNDAY = 6

The Python documentation defines the following ...