dataclasses — Data Classes

Source code: Lib/dataclasses.py

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This module provides a decorator and functions for automatically adding generated special methods such as __init__() and __repr__() to user-defined classes. It was originally described in PEP 557.

The member variables to use in these generated methods are defined using PEP 526 type annotations. For example, this code:

from dataclasses import dataclass

@dataclass
class InventoryItem:
    """Class for keeping track of an item in inventory."""
    name: str
    unit_price: float
    quantity_on_hand: int = 0

    def total_cost(self) -> float:
        return self.unit_price * self.quantity_on_hand

will add, among other things, a __init__() that looks like:

def __init__(self, name: str, unit_price: float, quantity_on_hand: int = 0):
    self.name = name
    self.unit_price = unit_price
    self.quantity_on_hand = quantity_on_hand

Note that this method is automatically added to the class: it is not directly specified in the InventoryItem definition shown above.

New in version 3.7.

Module contents

@dataclasses.dataclass(*, init