CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythoninheritancedefaultinitsuper
raas
raas

Reputation: 59

How to inherit default values from Parent class using super()

fairly new to python here, and to programming as general, i have the following example, in which i'm trying to inherit the default values from the Parent class, in a way that both the objects can be made. How to do it nicely and clean? - Tried to experiment with *args and **kwargs, but it had different errors.

class Person(object):

def __init__(self, name="Jane Doe", age="30", gender="female"):
    self.name = name
    self.age = age
    self.gender = gender
    self.goal = "My goal is: Live for the moment!"


class Student(Person):

def __init__(self, name, age, gender, prev_org="The School of Life", skip_d=0):
    super(Student, self).__init__(name, age, gender,)
    self.prev_org = prev_org
    self.skip_d = skip_d
    self.goal = "Be a junior software developer."

 john = Student('John Doe', 20, 'male', 'BME')

 student = Student()

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2039

Answers (2)

alxwrd
alxwrd

Reputation: 2470

You can achieve this with *args, but I don't think it's a great design choice.

class Student(Person):

    def __init__(self, *args, prev_org="The School of Life", skip_d=0):
        super(Student, self).__init__(*args[:2])

This is passing the first 3 positional arguments off to the parent (Person) class so Student doesn't need to worry about it.

You need to slice ([:2]) the list because if you create an instance of Student like so:

john = Student('John Doe', 20, 'male', 'BME')

Then 'BME' is now a positional argument, and is included in *args. Whereas:

john = Student('John Doe', 20, 'male', prev_org='BME')

It is now a keyword argument, so wouldn't appear in *args.

Upvotes: 1

etaloof
etaloof

Reputation: 662

I don't think this is possible. What I've seen instead is something like this:

class Person(object):

    def __init__(self, name=None, age=None, gender=None):
        if name is None:
            name = "Jane Doe"
        if age is None:
            age = "30"
        if gender is None:
            gender = "female"

        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.gender = gender
        self.goal = "My goal is: Live for the moment!"


class Student(Person):

    def __init__(self, name=None, age=None, gender=None, prev_org="The School of Life", skip_d=0):
        super(Student, self).__init__(name, age, gender)
        self.prev_org = prev_org
        self.skip_d = skip_d
        self.goal = "Be a junior software developer."


john = Student('John Doe', 20, 'male', 'BME')

student = Student()

Upvotes: 0

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