How to define enum values that are functions?
In addition to the answer of Bakuriu... If you use the wrapper approach like above you loose information about the original function like __name__
, __repr__
and so on after wrapping it. This will cause problems for example if you want to use sphinx for generation of source code documentation. Therefore add the following to your wrapper class.
class wrapper:
def __init__(self, function):
self.function = function
functools.update_wrapper(self, function)
def __call__(self,*args, **kwargs):
return self.function(*args, **kwargs)
def __repr__(self):
return self.function.__repr__()
Another less clunky solution is to put the functions in a tuple. As Bakuriu mentioned, you may want to make the enum callable.
from enum import Enum
def functionA():
pass
def functionB():
pass
class AvailableFunctions(Enum):
OptionA = (functionA,)
OptionB = (functionB,)
def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.value[0](*args, **kwargs)
Now you can use it like this:
AvailableFunctions.OptionA() # calls functionA
Your assumption is wrong. Values can be arbitrary, they are not limited to integers. From the documentation:
The examples above use integers for enumeration values. Using integers is short and handy (and provided by default by the Functional API), but not strictly enforced. In the vast majority of use-cases, one doesn’t care what the actual value of an enumeration is. But if the value is important, enumerations can have arbitrary values.
However the issue with functions is that they are considered to be method definitions instead of attributes!
In [1]: from enum import Enum
In [2]: def f(self, *args):
...: pass
...:
In [3]: class MyEnum(Enum):
...: a = f
...: def b(self, *args):
...: print(self, args)
...:
In [4]: list(MyEnum) # it has no values
Out[4]: []
In [5]: MyEnum.a
Out[5]: <function __main__.f>
In [6]: MyEnum.b
Out[6]: <function __main__.MyEnum.b>
You can work around this by using a wrapper class or just functools.partial
or (only in Python2) staticmethod
:
from functools import partial
class MyEnum(Enum):
OptionA = partial(functionA)
OptionB = staticmethod(functionB)
Sample run:
In [7]: from functools import partial
In [8]: class MyEnum2(Enum):
...: a = partial(f)
...: def b(self, *args):
...: print(self, args)
...:
In [9]: list(MyEnum2)
Out[9]: [<MyEnum2.a: functools.partial(<function f at 0x7f4130f9aae8>)>]
In [10]: MyEnum2.a
Out[10]: <MyEnum2.a: functools.partial(<function f at 0x7f4130f9aae8>)>
Or using a wrapper class:
In [13]: class Wrapper:
...: def __init__(self, f):
...: self.f = f
...: def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
...: return self.f(*args, **kwargs)
...:
In [14]: class MyEnum3(Enum):
...: a = Wrapper(f)
...:
In [15]: list(MyEnum3)
Out[15]: [<MyEnum3.a: <__main__.Wrapper object at 0x7f413075b358>>]
Also note that if you want you can define the __call__
method in your enumeration class to make the values callable:
In [1]: from enum import Enum
In [2]: def f(*args):
...: print(args)
...:
In [3]: class MyEnum(Enum):
...: a = partial(f)
...: def __call__(self, *args):
...: self.value(*args)
...:
In [5]: MyEnum.a(1,2,3) # no need for MyEnum.a.value(1,2,3)
(1, 2, 3)