"This inspection detects instance attribute definition outside init method" PyCharm

Question

I'm using the following class to connect and create a cursor within a firebase database:

class Firebird:

    username= "..."
    password= "..."

    def __init__(self, archive):
        self.archive = archive

   def connect(self):
       try:
           self.connection = connect(dsn=self.archive, user=self.username, password=self.password)
       except Error, e:
           print "Failed to connect to database", e
           exit(0)

And the PyCharm is warning me: "This inspection detects instance attribute definition outside init method", in the self.connection assign.

Is it a bad practice assign properties to the instance outside of __init__? In this case, what could i do?

Antoine · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-22 20:08:29Z

9

Yes it's generally considered a good practice to explicitly define/declare all your attributes in the __init__ function, this way you have a quick list of all used (or unused) attributes in the class.

class Firebird:

    username= "..."
    password= "..."

    def __init__(self, archive):
        self.archive = archive
        self.connection = None

   def connect(self):
       try:
           self.connection = connect(dsn=self.archive, user=self.username, password=self.password)
       except Error, e:
           print "Failed to connect to database", e
           exit(0)

answered Nov 22, 2016 at 20:08

Antoine

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1 Comment

Erik Aronesty Over a year ago

If you use from pystrict import strict \n @strict \n class Firebird: ..., then it will be a runtime error to create attrs outside of init.

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