How define constructor implementation for an Abstract Class in Python?

Question

I am trying to declare an abstract class A with a constructor with a default behavior: all subclasses must initialize a member self.n:

Answer 1

You should define the methods as abstract as well with the @abc.abstractmethod decorator.

Answer 2

You can implement something like below :

from abc import ABC
class A(ABC):
    def __init__(self, n):
        self.n = n
        super(A,self).__init__()

Instantiating this class would throw an error

Answer 3

Making the __init__ an abstract method:

from abc import ABCMeta, abstractmethod

class A(object):
    __metaclass__ = ABCMeta

    @abstractmethod
    def __init__(self, n):
        self.n = n


if __name__ == '__main__':
    a = A(3)

helps:

TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class A with abstract methods __init__

Python 3 version:

from abc import ABCMeta, abstractmethod

class A(object, metaclass=ABCMeta):

    @abstractmethod
    def __init__(self, n):
        self.n = n


if __name__ == '__main__':
    a = A(3)

Works as well:

TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class A with abstract methods __init__

Answer 4

A not so elegant solution can be this:

class A(object):
  def __init__(self, n):
    if self.__class__ == A:
      raise Exception('I am abstract!')
    self.n = n

Usage

class B(A):
  pass
a = A(1)  # Will throw exception
b = B(1)  # Works fine as expected.

Answer 5

You can override __new__ method to prevent direct instantiation.

class A(object):
    __metaclass__ = ABCMeta

    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if cls is A:
            raise TypeError(
                "TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class {name} directly".format(name=cls.__name__)
            )
        return object.__new__(cls)

Output:

>>> A()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<ipython-input-8-3cd318a12eea>", line 1, in <module>
    A()
  File "/Users/ashwini/py/so.py", line 11, in __new__
    "TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class {name} directly".format(name=cls.__name__)
TypeError: TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class A directly