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pythonnamedtuple
Riddhi Siddhi
Riddhi Siddhi

Reputation: 23

When should I use and when should I avoid namedtuple in Python?

During my online class one of my python tutors told me that namedtuple can cause more harm than good.

I am confused why. Can someone please specify when to use namedtuple and when not to?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2294

Answers (2)

sytech
sytech

Reputation: 40861

The classic example of namedtuple is something like this...

>>> Point = namedtuple('Point', ['x', 'y'])
>>> p = Point(x=1, y=2)
>>> p.x
1
p.y
2

The thing I think most people find attractive at first is the ability to make a class so easily and be able to instanciate with keyword args Point(x=1, y=2) and do dotted access like p.x and p.y.

However, there are a lot of things that are easily overlooked and is rather inflexible. Unexpected things can happen for subclasses, too. Unless namedtuple really hits your use-case, you're better off using SimpleNamespace if you just want dotted-name lookups and a nice repr.

from types import SimpleNamespace

class Point(SimpleNameSpace):
    def __init__(self, x, y=0):
        # simple wrapper to accept arguments positionally or as keywords with defaults
        super().__init__(x=x, y=y)

Upvotes: 5

Hariom Singh
Hariom Singh

Reputation: 3632

Few problem's what I can see is

You can't specify default arguments values for namedtuple classes.This makes them unwieldy when your data may have many optional properties .

The attribute values of namedtuple instances are still accessible using numerical indexes and iteration .Especially in externalised API's , this can lead to unintentional usage that makes it harder to move to real class later.If you are not in control of all of the usage of namedtuple instances , its' better define your own class

and for when to use it please do see the comment by IMCoins

Upvotes: 0

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