Python: Iterating through constructor's arguments

Question

I often find myself writing class constructors like this:

class foo:
    def __init__(self, arg1, arg2, arg3):
        self.arg1 = arg1
        self.arg2 = arg2
         


        

Answer 1

For python >= 3.7 take a look at the @dataclass class decorator. Among other things, it handles your __init__ boilerplate coding problem.

From the doc:

@dataclass
class InventoryItem:
    name: str
    unit_price: float
    quantity_on_hand: int = 0

Will automatically add an __init__ like that:

def __init__(self, name: str, unit_price: float, quantity_on_hand: int=0):
    self.name = name
    self.unit_price = unit_price
    self.quantity_on_hand = quantity_on_hand