Abstract methods in Python
When in doubt, do as Guido does.
No underscore. Just define the "abstract method" as a one-liner which raises NotImplementedError:
class Abstract():
def ConcreteMethod(self):
raise NotImplementedError("error message")
In Python, you usually avoid having such abstract methods alltogether. You define an interface by the documentation, and simply assume the objects that are passed in fulfil that interface ("duck typing").
If you really want to define an abstract base class with abstract methods, this can be done using the abc
module:
from abc import ABCMeta, abstractmethod
class Abstract(metaclass=ABCMeta):
def use_concrete_implementation(self):
print(self._concrete_method())
@abstractmethod
def _concrete_method(self):
pass
class Concrete(Abstract):
def _concrete_method(self):
return 2 * 3
Again, that is not the usual Python way to do things. One of the main objectives of the abc
module was to introduce a mechanism to overload isinstance()
, but isinstance()
checks are normally avoided in favour of duck typing. Use it if you need it, but not as a general pattern for defining interfaces.