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)))
