Listing all instance of a class

Question

I wrote a Python module, with several classes that inherit from a single class called MasterBlock. I want to import this module in a script, create several instance

Answer 1

If you add a __new__() method as shown below to your base class which keeps track of all instances created in a class variable, you could make the process more-or-less automatic and not have to remember to call something in the __init__() of each subclass.

class MasterBlock(object):
    instances = []
    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        instance = super(MasterBlock, cls).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
        instance.instances.append(instance)
        return instance

    def main(self):
        print('in main of', self.__class__.__name__)  # for testing purposes

class RandomA(MasterBlock):
    def __init__(self):
        pass
    # inherit the main function

class AnotherRandom(RandomA):  # works for sub-subclasses, too
    def __init__(self):
        pass
    # inherit the main function

a=RandomA()
b=AnotherRandom()
c=AnotherRandom()

for instance in MasterBlock.instances:
    instance.main()

Output:

in main of RandomA
in main of AnotherRandom
in main of AnotherRandom