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

You can use StringVar or IntVar, etc, your constant is const_val

val = 'Stackoverflow'
const_val = StringVar(val)
const.trace('w', reverse)

def reverse(*args):
    const_val.set(val)

Answer 2

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 "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  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 "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'ConstArray' object does not support item assignment
>>> C1[0]
222

Answer 3

Python doesn't have constants.

Perhaps the easiest alternative is to define a function for it:

def MY_CONSTANT():
    return 42

MY_CONSTANT() now has all the functionality of a constant (plus some annoying braces).

Answer 4

In addition to the two top answers (just use variables with UPPERCASE names, or use properties to make the values read-only), I want to mention that it's possible to use metaclasses in order to implement named constants. I provide a very simple solution using metaclasses at GitHub which may be helpful if you want the values to be more informative about their type/name:

>>> from named_constants import Constants
>>> class Colors(Constants):
...     black = 0
...     red = 1
...     white = 15
...
>>> c = Colors.black
>>> c == 0
True
>>> c
Colors.black
>>> c.name()
'black'
>>> Colors(0) is c
True

This is slightly more advanced Python, but still very easy to use and handy. (The module has some more features, including constants being read-only, see its README.)

There are similar solutions floating around in various repositories, but to the best of my knowledge they either lack one of the fundamental features that I would expect from constants (like being constant, or being of arbitrary type), or they have esoteric features added that make them less generally applicable. But YMMV, I would be grateful for feedback. :-)

Answer 5

There is a cleaner way to do this with namedtuple:

from collections import namedtuple


def make_consts(name, **kwargs):
    return namedtuple(name, kwargs.keys())(**kwargs)

Usage Example

CONSTS = make_consts("baz1",
                     foo=1,
                     bar=2)

With this exactly approach you can namespace your constants.

Answer 6

Python dictionaries are mutable, so they don't seem like a good way to declare constants:

>>> constants = {"foo":1, "bar":2}
>>> print constants
{'foo': 1, 'bar': 2}
>>> constants["bar"] = 3
>>> print constants
{'foo': 1, 'bar': 3}