Why use **kwargs in python? What are some real world advantages over using named arguments?

Question

I come from a background in static languages. Can someone explain (ideally through example) the real world advantages of using **kwargs over named arguments

Answer 1

There are two common cases:

First: You are wrapping another function which takes a number of keyword argument, but you are just going to pass them along:

def my_wrapper(a, b, **kwargs):
    do_something_first(a, b)
    the_real_function(**kwargs)

Second: You are willing to accept any keyword argument, for example, to set attributes on an object:

class OpenEndedObject:
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        for k, v in kwargs.items():
            setattr(self, k, v)

foo = OpenEndedObject(a=1, foo='bar')
assert foo.a == 1
assert foo.foo == 'bar'