How do I create a constant in Python?

Question

Is there a way to declare a constant in Python? In Java we can create constant values in this manner:

public static          


        

Answer 1

In my case, I needed immutable bytearrays for an implementation of a crypto library containing many literal numbers I wanted to ensure were constant.

This answer works but attempted reassignment of bytearray elements does not raise an error.

def const(func):
    '''implement const decorator'''
    def fset(self, val):
        '''attempting to set a const raises `ConstError`'''
        class ConstError(TypeError):
            '''special exception for const reassignment'''
            pass

        raise ConstError

    def fget(self):
        '''get a const'''
        return func()

    return property(fget, fset)


class Consts(object):
    '''contain all constants'''

    @const
    def C1():
        '''reassignment to C1 fails silently'''
        return bytearray.fromhex('deadbeef')

    @const
    def pi():
        '''is immutable'''
        return 3.141592653589793

Constants are immutable, but constant bytearray assignment fails silently:

>>> c = Consts()
>>> c.pi = 6.283185307179586  # (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_(2%CF%80))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
  File "consts.py", line 9, in fset
    raise ConstError
__main__.ConstError
>>> c.C1[0] = 0
>>> c.C1[0]
222
>>> c.C1
bytearray(b'\xde\xad\xbe\xef')

A more powerful, simple, and perhaps even more 'pythonic' approach involves the use of memoryview objects (buffer objects in <= python-2.6).

import sys

PY_VER = sys.version.split()[0].split('.')

if int(PY_VER[0]) == 2:
    if int(PY_VER[1]) < 6:
        raise NotImplementedError
    elif int(PY_VER[1]) == 6:
        memoryview = buffer

class ConstArray(object):
    '''represent a constant bytearray'''
    def __init__(self, init):
        '''
        create a hidden bytearray and expose a memoryview of that bytearray for
        read-only use
        '''
        if int(PY_VER[1]) == 6:
            self.__array = bytearray(init.decode('hex'))
        else:
            self.__array = bytearray.fromhex(init)

        self.array = memoryview(self.__array)

    def __str__(self):
        return str(self.__array)

    def __getitem__(self, *args, **kwargs):
       return self.array.__getitem__(*args, **kwargs)

ConstArray item assignment is a TypeError:

>>> C1 = ConstArray('deadbeef')
>>> C1[0] = 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'ConstArray' object does not support item assignment
>>> C1[0]
222