[python] Python, creating objects

I'm trying to learn python and I now I am trying to get the hang of classes and how to manipulate them with instances.

I can't seem to understand this practice problem:

Create and return a student object whose name, age, and major are the same as those given as input

def make_student(name, age, major)

I just don't get what it means by object, do they mean I should create an array inside the function that holds these values? or create a class and let this function be inside it, and assign instances? (before this question i was asked to set up a student class with name, age, and major inside)

class Student:
    name = "Unknown name"
    age = 0
    major = "Unknown major"

This question is related to python

The answer is


when you create an object using predefine class, at first you want to create a variable for storing that object. Then you can create object and store variable that you created.

class Student:
     def __init__(self):

# creating an object....

   student1=Student()

Actually this init method is the constructor of class.you can initialize that method using some attributes.. In that point , when you creating an object , you will have to pass some values for particular attributes..

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

 # creating an object.......

     student2=Student("smith",25)

Create a class and give it an __init__ method:

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

    def is_old(self):
        return self.age > 100

Now, you can initialize an instance of the Student class:

>>> s = Student('John', 88, None)
>>> s.name
    'John'
>>> s.age
    88

Although I'm not sure why you need a make_student student function if it does the same thing as Student.__init__.


Objects are instances of classes. Classes are just the blueprints for objects. So given your class definition -

# Note the added (object) - this is the preferred way of creating new classes
class Student(object):
    name = "Unknown name"
    age = 0
    major = "Unknown major"

You can create a make_student function by explicitly assigning the attributes to a new instance of Student -

def make_student(name, age, major):
    student = Student()
    student.name = name
    student.age = age
    student.major = major
    return student

But it probably makes more sense to do this in a constructor (__init__) -

class Student(object):
    def __init__(self, name="Unknown name", age=0, major="Unknown major"):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.major = major

The constructor is called when you use Student(). It will take the arguments defined in the __init__ method. The constructor signature would now essentially be Student(name, age, major).

If you use that, then a make_student function is trivial (and superfluous) -

def make_student(name, age, major):
    return Student(name, age, major)

For fun, here is an example of how to create a make_student function without defining a class. Please do not try this at home.

def make_student(name, age, major):
    return type('Student', (object,),
                {'name': name, 'age': age, 'major': major})()