How To Construct Classes and Define Objects

Classes

Classes are like a blueprint or a prototype that you can define to use to create objects.

We define classes by using the class keyword, similar to how we define functions by using the def keyword.

Let’s define a class called Shark that has two functions associated with it, one for swimming and one for being awesome:

class Shark:
    def swim(self):
        print("The shark is swimming.")

    def be_awesome(self):
        print("The shark is being awesome.")

Because these functions are indented under the class Shark, they are called methods. Methods are a special kind of function that are defined within a class.

The argument to these functions is the word self, which is a reference to objects that are made based on this class. To reference instances (or objects) of the class, self will always be the first parameter, but it need not be the only one.

Defining this class did not create any Shark objects, only the pattern for a Shark object that we can define later. That is, if you run the program above at this stage nothing will be returned.

Creating the Shark class above provided us with a blueprint for an object.

Objects

An object is an instance of a class. We can take the Shark class defined above, and use it to create an object or instance of it.

We’ll make a Shark object called sammy:

sammy = Shark()

Here, we initialized the object sammy as an instance of the class by setting it equal to Shark().

Now, let’s use the two methods with the Shark object sammy:

sammy = Shark()
sammy.swim()
sammy.be_awesome()

The Shark object sammy is using the two methods swim() and be_awesome(). We called these using the dot operator (.), which is used to reference an attribute of the object. In this case, the attribute is a method and it’s called with parentheses, like how you would also call with a function.

Because the keyword self was a parameter of the methods as defined in the Shark class, the sammy object gets passed to the methods. The self parameter ensures that the methods have a way of referring to object attributes.

When we call the methods, however, nothing is passed inside the parentheses, the object sammy is being automatically passed with the dot operator.

Let’s add the object within the context of a program:

class Shark:
    def swim(self):
        print("The shark is swimming.")

    def be_awesome(self):
        print("The shark is being awesome.")


def main():
    sammy = Shark()
    sammy.swim()
    sammy.be_awesome()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

<figure class="code">

Let’s run the program to see what it does:

python shark.py

The shark is swimming.
The shark is being awesome.

The object sammy calls the two methods in the main() function of the program, causing those methods to run.

The Constructor Method

The constructor method is used to initialize data. It is run as soon as an object of a class is instantiated. Also known as the __init__ method, it will be the first definition of a class and looks like this:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self):
        print("This is the constructor method.")

If you added the above __init__ method to the Shark class in the program above, the program would output the following without your modifying anything within the sammy instantiation:

This is the constructor method.
The shark is swimming.
The shark is being awesome.

This is because the constructor method is automatically initialized. You should use this method to carry out any initializing you would like to do with your class objects.

Instead of using the constructor method above, let’s create one that uses a name variable that we can use to assign names to objects. We’ll pass name as a parameter and set self.name equal to name:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

Next, we can modify the strings in our functions to reference the names, as below:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def swim(self):
        # Reference the name
        print(self.name + " is swimming.")

    def be_awesome(self):
        # Reference the name
        print(self.name + " is being awesome.")

Finally, we can set the name of the Shark object sammy as equal to "Sammy" by passing it as a parameter of the Shark class:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def swim(self):
        print(self.name + " is swimming.")

    def be_awesome(self):
        print(self.name + " is being awesome.")


def main():
    # Set name of Shark object
    sammy = Shark("Sammy")
    sammy.swim()
    sammy.be_awesome()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

<figure class="code">

We can run the program now:

python shark.py

Sammy is swimming.
Sammy is being awesome.

We see that the name we passed to the object is being printed out. We defined the __init__ method with the parameter name (along with the self keyword) and defined a variable within the method.

Because the constructor method is automatically initialized, we do not need to explicitly call it, only pass the arguments in the parentheses following the class name when we create a new instance of the class.

If we wanted to add another parameter, such as age, we could do so by also passing it to the __init__ method:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self, name, age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age

Then, when we create our object sammy, we can pass Sammy’s age in our statement:

sammy = Shark("Sammy", 5)

To make use of age, we would need to also create a method in the class that calls for it.

Constructor methods allow us to initialize certain attributes of an object.

Working with More Than One Object

Classes are useful because they allow us to create many similar objects based on the same blueprint.

To get a sense for how this works, let’s add another Shark object to our program:

class Shark:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def swim(self):
        print(self.name + " is swimming.")

    def be_awesome(self):
        print(self.name + " is being awesome.")

def main():
    sammy = Shark("Sammy")
    sammy.be_awesome()
    stevie = Shark("Stevie")
    stevie.swim()

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

<figure class="code">

We have created a second Shark object called stevie and passed the name "Stevie" to it. In this example, we used the be_awesome() method with sammy and the swim() method with stevie.

Let’s run the program:

python shark.py

Sammy is being awesome.
Stevie is swimming.

The output shows that we are using two different objects, the sammy object and the stevie object, both of the Shark class.

Classes make it possible to create more than one object following the same pattern without creating each one from scratch.

Conclusion

This tutorial went through creating classes, instantiating objects, initializing attributes with the constructor method, and working with more than one object of the same class.

Object-oriented programming is an important concept to understand because it makes code recycling more straightforward, as objects created for one program can be used in another. Object-oriented programs also make for better program design since complex programs are difficult to write and require careful planning, and this in turn makes it less work to maintain the program over time.