Create static instances of a class inside said class in Python

Posted by Samir Talwar on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Samir Talwar
Published on 2010-03-30T15:49:41Z Indexed on 2010/03/30 15:53 UTC
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Apologies if I've got the terminology wrong here—I can't think what this particular idiom would be called.

I've been trying to create a Python 3 class that statically declares instances of itself inside itself—sort of like an enum would work. Here's a simplified version of the code I wrote:

class Test:
    A = Test("A")
    B = Test("B")

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

    def __str__(self):
       return "Test: " + self.value

print(str(Test.A))
print(str(Test.B))

Writing this, I got an exception on line 2 (A = Test("A")). I assume line 3 would also error if it had made it that far. Using __class__ instead of Test gives the same error.

  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in Test
NameError: name 'Test' is not defined

Is there any way to refer to the current class in a static context in Python? I could declare these particular variables outside the class or in a separate class, but for clarity's sake, I'd rather not if I can help it.

To better demonstrate what I'm trying to do, here's the same example in Java:

public class Test {
    private static final Test A = new Test("A");
    private static final Test B = new Test("B");

    private final String value;

    public Test(String value) {
        this.value = value;
    }

    public String toString() {
        return "Test: " + value;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(A);
        System.out.println(B);
    }
}

This works as you would expect: it prints:

Test: A
Test: B

How can I do the same thing in Python?

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