Python How-To

9 Using classes beyond the basics

This chapter covers

• Creating enumerations
• Eliminating boilerplate of a custom class
• Processing JSON data
• Creating lazy attributes
• Refactoring a cumbersome class

Python is an object-oriented language at its core. The hallmark of an object-oriented language is using objects to preserve data and provide functionalities, which generally requires you to implement well-defined custom classes. In chapter 8, you learned the essential techniques for defining a class. But many other techniques can help us define more robust custom classes so that we can build a more maintainable codebase with well-defined data models.

Custom classes typically require implementation of several special methods, for example, including ...