Is there any Python equivalent to partial classes?

Question

Using \"new\" style classes (I\'m in python 3.2) is there a way to split a class over multiple files? I\'ve got a large class (which really should be a single class from an

Answer 1

First off, I don't see how splitting the class into multiple files makes editing any easier. A decent IDE should be able to find any method easily whether in one file or multiple; if you're not using a decent IDE, splitting the class means the maintainer has to guess which file a given method is in, which sounds harder rather than easier.

More fundamentally, this class - so large that you want a special language feature just to support its weight - sounds fundamentally broken. How many lines of code are we talking about? Almost certainly, it would be a better idea to do one of:

• Refactor duplicated code into fewer, more general primitives
• Define a base class and extend it with subclasses as Karoly Horvath suggests in comments (this is the closest thing to the 'partial classes' that you're asking for that I would endorse)
• Define a few separate classes to encapsulate different parts of this class's functionality, and compose this class of instances of those smaller ones.