So the situation I want to resolve is pretty simple. Say I have a subclass C that extends parents B and A. Parents B, and A each have their own __repr__ methods. When I print C, the __repr__ method of parent A is always invoked, but I want to invoke parent B's.
How can I do this?
Assume A is defined like this:
class A():
def __repr__(self):
return "This is A"
and B is defined similarly:
class B():
def __repr__(self):
return "This is B"
while C is defined like so:
class C(A, B):
def __init__(self):
pass
or something similar. print A() will yield This is A, while the same for B will yield This is B. print C() will, as you describe, give This is A. However, if you just change the order of C's inheritance:
class C(B, A): # change order of A and B
def __init__(self):
pass
then print C() will give you This is B. Simple as that.
If all I wanted was to call an inherited class's repr I would just do:
class C(B, A): # whatever order
def __repr__(self):
return A.__repr__(self)
I had a case similar, but slightly different to this question. I wanted to print the default repr of an inherited class. For me class C was dynamically defined with B being a mixin class, but I wanted to show the name and module of the "main" class A. I ended up with this solution.
class C(B, A):
def __repr__(self):
'''Override repr to show the name and path of the main cls.'''
return '<{} {}.{} object at {}>'.format(
self.__class__.__name__,
A.__module__,
A.__name__,
hex(id(self)))
