Nested Python class needs to access variable in enclosing class

Question

I\'ve seen a few \"solutions\" to this, but the solution every time seems to be \"Don\'t use nested classes, define the classes outside and then use them normally\". I don\'

Answer 1

Well, the following works (further simplified from your example). Note that you don't have to "declare" member variables at class level like C++/C#/Java etc, just set them on self within __init__:

class ParentClass:
    def __init__(self):
        self.constant_pool = ["test"]
        self.ChildClass.constant_pool = self.constant_pool
        self.children = [self.ChildClass()]

    class ChildClass:
        def __init__(self):
            self.name = self.constant_pool[0]
            print "child name is", self.name

p = ParentClass() # Prints "child name is test"

Note that you could still do the same sort of thing without the child classes being nested.