Data classes are a new feature of Python 3.7 that allows you to create classes that contain only fields of data and methods to get or access the fields. They serve as containers for data that can be used by other classes that implement the logic of your application.
First of all, you need to have the latest Python 3.7 version installed on your system. From your terminal, type the following command to start an interactive Python shell:
$ python
Python 3.7.0 (v3.7.0:1bf9cc5093, Jun 27 2018, 04:06:47) [MSC v.1914 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Next you can use data classes by importing the dataclass decorator from the dataclasses module. For instance, this is a simple example:
from dataclasses import dataclass
@dataclass
class Contact:
name: str
email: str
phone: str
You created a Contact type with the name, email and phone fields of type str.
You can now instances of Contact:
>>> contact = Contact("test","[email protected]","00 00 00 00")
>>> contact
Contact(name='test', email='[email protected]', phone='00 00 00 00')
You need to provide the positional arguments: ‘name’, ‘email’, and ‘phone’ or otherwise you’ll get an error. You can also use keyword arguments:
>>> contact1 = Contact(name="test1",email="[email protected]",phone="+01 00 00 00")
>>> contact1
Contact(name='test1', email='[email protected]', phone='+01 00 00 00')