python 2.6 trivia game, true/false, multchoice, at random

Question

import random

class Trivia(object):
    points = 0
    def __init__(self, mult_tf, question, options, correct, reason):
        self.mult_tf = mult_tf
        self.question = question
        self.options = options
        self.correct = correct
        self.reason = reason
        mult_tf, question, options, correct, reason = block

    def next_line(the_file):
        line = the_file.readline()
        line = line.replace('/', '\n')
        return line

    def questions(self, block):
        file_name = open('Trivia_Questions.txt', 'r')
        while True:
            mult_tf = next_line(file_name)
            question = next_line(file_name)
            options = []
            if mult_tf == 'Multiple Choice':
                for i in range(4):
                    options.append(next_line(file_name))
            else:
                for i in range(2):
                    options.append(next_line(file_name))
            correct = next_line(file_name)
            reason = next_line(file_name)
            mult_tf, question, options, correct, reason = block
        file_name.close()

    def rand_quest(self):
        for block in questions():
            questions.shuffle()
            return questions

    def show(self):
        while True:
            print mult_tf
            print question
            print options
            guess = raw_input('\nWhich do you choose? ')
            if guess == correct:
                print '\nCorrect!'
                points += 10
            else:
                print '\nIncorrect!'
            print reason
        print '\nYou completed the game!'
        print '\nYou got', points, 'points!'

Trivia.show()
raw_input('\n\nPress enter to exit')

I posted a question a few hours ago on the same question. I believe I have gotten a little further in my search for an answer. The code above is supposed to be on a trivia game with multiple choice and true/false questions. I believe I am close to the solution I just cannot get it to run properly. I constantly get this error:

Trivia.show()
TypeError: unbound method show() must be called with Trivia instance as first argument (got nothing instead) 

Not quite sure what the arguement should be, I thought that the show method would print what I needed it to print.

Answer 1

show() is an instance method, so to call it you need to create an instance of the Trivia class, e.g.:

trivia = Trivia(mult_tf, question, options, correct, reason)
trivia.show()

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More broadly, though, your class doesn't make any sense. A few examples:

__init__ won't work, because in the last line:

mult_tf, question, options, correct, reason = block

which means "unpack the five items in block into these other five variables", the name block isn't defined, so you will get a NameError. Therefore you can never create a class instance and nothing else will run.

next_line seems fine, except you don't have a self argument, but it isn't really a class or instance method (it doesn't use any attributes of the class or instance) so probably doesn't belong in the class anyway.

questions is a bit odd; it gets all these values from the file, then the method ends without actually doing anything with them, having overwritten their values with whatever is in block. Nothing gets returned or added to the instance, so it may as well never have run.

rand_quest also has name errors, as questions isn't defined (nor is it an argument). You could call self.questions(), except that doesn't really do or return anything, as discussed. Functions don't have a shuffle() method unless you define it, and even if you got the syntax right (random.shuffle(questions)) you can't shuffle a function - what would that even mean?

In show, there is nothing to end the while True loop, so this would just run forever, except for the fact that you have a whole load of NameErrors there too (e.g. mult_tf doesn't exist in that scope, although self.mult_tf does.

---

I think you need to split this into three things:

1. A Trivia class, where each instance is one question. This has an __init__ method (takes the attributes, returns nothing), a show method (takes no arguments, returns a string) and a check_answer method (takes a string, returns a boolean).
2. An import_file function, which takes a filename and returns a list of Trivia instances based on the contents of the file.
3. A game loop, which gets the list of questions from import_file then random.shuffles them and asks them.