Automatically setting an enum member's value to its name

Question

I\'ve been messing around with python\'s enum library and have come across a conundrum. In the docs, they show an example of an auto-numbering enum, wherein something is def

Answer 1

Perhaps you are looking for the name attribute which is automatically provided by the Enum class

>>> class Animal(Enum):
...     ant = 1
...     bee = 2
...     cat = 3
...     dog = 4
...

>>> Animal.ant.name == "ant"
True

Though if you really want to shoot yourself in the foot. And I'm sure this will introduce a whole world of gotchas (I've eliminated the most obvious one).

from enum import Enum, EnumMeta, _EnumDict

class AutoStrEnumDict(_EnumDict):
    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        super().__setitem__(key, key)

class AutoStrEnumMeta(EnumMeta):
    @classmethod
    def __prepare__(metacls, cls, bases):
        return AutoStrEnumDict()
    def __init__(self, name, bases, attrs):
        super().__init__(name, bases, attrs)
        # override Enum.__str__
        # can't put these on the class directly otherwise EnumMeta overwrites them
        # should also consider resetting __repr__, __format__ and __reduce_ex__
        if self.__str__ is not str.__str__:
            self.__str__ = str.__str__

class AutoStrNameEnum(str, Enum, metaclass=AutoStrEnumMeta):
    pass

class Animal(AutoStrNameEnum):
    horse = ()
    dog = ()

print(Animal.horse)
assert Animal.horse == "horse"
assert str(Animal.horse) == "horse" 
# and not equal to "Animal.horse" (the gotcha mentioned earlier)