Tomáš Peterka

std::blogout

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Constructors

Disclaimer: I personally think that classes are being overused. A simple function is more testable and elegant. Classes should be used only when you need to keep state between two function calls.

Constructor

• must setup all attributes representing class’ state
• must not setup attributes not important for class state
• must not do any action besides setting attributes
• should construct private attributes from the public ones

Why?

Because of testability. For every class you are going to test you need to know in what state it is. If a constructor was running some functions in background you are not the one in control. That will lead to potentially different class state with the same construct parameters.

I need runtime information because it defines state of class

No you do not. Runtime information should be obtained in runtime by a function/method. Class state never depends on external runtime states.

How do I distinguish class-state and runtime attribute?

The rule of thumb for me is: If you have used an attribute only once (or in one method) then it is a runtime information.

When you put runtime information into attributes you will make your app hard to extend and messy.

Example

class Computer:
    def __init__(self, ncpu, ram):
        # simple asignment is ok
        self.ram = ram

        # construct private attribute from a public one
        # I prefer to save the public one too in case of serialization/deserialization
        self.ncpu = ncpu
        self._cpu_list = [CPU(n) for n in range(ncpu)]

        # this should never happen
        # do NOT perform any actions in constructor
        self.constraintRAM(ram)

When you put all runtime information into attributes

class Computer:

    def __init__(self,
                 software_root,
                 instance_root,
                 master_url,
                 computer_id,
                 buildout,
                 logger,
                 maximum_periodicity=86400,
                 key_file=None,
                 cert_file=None,
                 signature_private_key_file=None,
                 signature_certificate_list=None,
                 download_binary_cache_url=None,
                 upload_binary_cache_url=None,
                 download_from_binary_cache_url_blacklist=None,
                 upload_to_binary_cache_url_blacklist=None,
                 upload_cache_url=None,
                 download_binary_dir_url=None,
                 upload_binary_dir_url=None,
                 upload_dir_url=None,
                 master_ca_file=None,
                 certificate_repository_path=None,
                 promise_timeout=3,
                 shacache_ca_file=None,
                 shacache_cert_file=None,
                 shacache_key_file=None,
                 shadir_ca_file=None,
                 shadir_cert_file=None,
                 shadir_key_file=None,
                 forbid_supervisord_automatic_launch=False,
                 develop=False,
                 software_release_filter_list=None,
                 computer_partition_filter_list=None,
                 software_min_free_space=None,
                 instance_min_free_space=None,
                 instance_storage_home=None,
                 ipv4_global_network=None,
                 firewall_conf={},
                 ):