Learning Python, 5th Edition

Chapter 32. Advanced Class Topics

This chapter concludes our look at OOP in Python by presenting a few more advanced class-related topics: we will survey subclassing built-in types, “new style” class changes and extensions, static and class methods, slots and properties, function and class decorators, the MRO and the super call, and more.

As we’ve seen, Python’s OOP model is, at its core, relatively simple, and some of the topics presented in this chapter are so advanced and optional that you may not encounter them very often in your Python applications-programming career. In the interest of completeness, though—and because you never know when an “advanced” topic may crop up in code you use—we’ll round out our discussion of classes with a brief look at these advanced tools for OOP work.

As usual, because this is the last chapter in this part of the book, it ends with a section on class-related “gotchas,” and the set of lab exercises for this part. I encourage you to work through the exercises to help cement the ideas we’ve studied here. I also suggest working on or studying larger OOP Python projects as a supplement to this book. As with much in computing, the benefits of OOP tend to become more apparent with practice.

Note

Content notes: This chapter collects advanced class topics, but some are too large for this chapter to cover well. Topics such as properties, descriptors, decorators, and metaclasses are mentioned only briefly here, and given a fuller treatment in the final part ...