Creating Classes in Python

The class statement creates a new class definition. The name of the class immediately follows the keyword class followed by a colon as follows −

class ClassName:
'Optional class documentation string'
class_suite

• The class has a documentation string, which can be accessed via ClassName.__doc__.
• The class_suite consists of all the component statements defining class members, data attributes and functions.

Example

Following is the example of a simple Python class −

class Employee:
   'Common base class for all employees'
   empCount = 0
   def __init__(self, name, salary):
      self.name = name
      self.salary = salary
      Employee.empCount += 1
   def displayCount(self):
      print "Total Employee %d" % Employee.empCount
   def displayEmployee(self):
      print "Name : ", self.name, ", Salary: ", self.salary

• The variable empCount is a class variable whose value is shared among all instances of a this class. This can be accessed as Employee.empCount from inside the class or outside the class.
• The first method __init__ is a special method, which is called class constructor or initialization method that Python calls when you create a new instance of this class.
• You declare other class methods like normal functions with the exception that the first argument to each method is self. Python adds the self argument to the list for you; you do not need to include it when you call the methods.