How to write a simple callback function?

Question

Python 2.7.10

I wrote the following code to test a simple callback function.

def callback(a, b):
    print(\'Sum = {0}\'.format(a+b))

def main(         


        

Answer 1

This is an old post, but perhaps the following may be additional clarification on writing and using a callback function, especially if you wonder where it gets its arguments from and whether you can access its return values (if there is no way to get it from the function that takes the callback function).

The following code defines a class CallBack that has two callback methods (functions) my_callback_sum and my_callback_multiply. The callback methods are fed into the method foo.

# understanding callback

class CallBack:

    @classmethod
    def my_callback_sum(cls, c_value1, c_value2):
        value = c_value1 + c_value2
        print(f'in my_callback_sum --> {c_value1} + {c_value2} = {value}')
        cls.operator = '+'
        return cls.operator, value

    @classmethod
    def my_callback_multiply(cls, c_value1, c_value2):
        value = c_value1 * c_value2
        print(f'in my_callback_multiply --> {c_value1} * {c_value2} = {value}')
        cls.operator = '*'
        return cls.operator, value

    @staticmethod
    def foo(foo_value, callback):
        _, value = callback(10, foo_value)
        # note foo only returns the value not the operator from callback!
        return value


if __name__ == '__main__':
    cb = CallBack()

    value = cb.foo(20, cb.my_callback_sum)
    print(f'in main --> {value} and the operator is {cb.operator}')

    value = cb.foo(20, cb.my_callback_multiply)
    print(f'in main --> {value} and the operator is {cb.operator}')

result:

in my_callback_sum --> 10 + 20 = 30
in main --> 30 and the operator is +
in my_callback_multiply --> 10 * 20 = 200 
in main --> 200 and the operator is *

As you can see one value for the callback function c_value2 it gets from argument foo_value in foo and given in main the value 20, while c_value1 it gets internally from foo in this case the value 10 (and may be not clearly visible if foo is some method of a third party imported module, like pyaudio).

The return value of the callback function functions can be retrieved by adding it to the namespace of the class CallBack, in this case cls.operator