Using NamedTuples to simplify item access in tuples

When we worked with tuples, we had to remember the positions as numbers. When we use a (r,g,b) tuple to represent a color, can we use "red" instead of zero, "green" instead of 1, and "blue" instead of 2?

Getting ready

Let's continue looking at items in recipes. The regular expression for parsing the string had three attributes: ingredient, amount, and unit. We used the following pattern with names for the various substrings:

r'(?P<ingredient>\w+):\s+(?P<amount>\d+)\s+(?P<unit>\w+)')

The resulting data tuple looked like this:

>>> item = match.groups()
('Kumquat', '2', 'cups')

While the matching between ingredient, amount, and unit is pretty clear, using something like the following isn't ideal. What does "1" mean? Is it really the quantity?

>>> Fraction(item[1])
Fraction(2, 1)

We want to define tuples with names, as well as positions.

How to do it...

1. We'll use the NamedTuple class definition from the typing package:

   >>> from typing import NamedTuple
   

2. With this base class definition, we can define our own unique tuples, with names for the items:

   >>> class Ingredient(NamedTuple):
   ...     ingredient: str
   ...     amount: str
   ...     unit: str
   

3. Now, we can create an instance of this unique kind of tuple by using the classname:

   >>> item_2 = Ingredient('Kumquat', '2', 'cups')
   

4. When we want a value, we can use name instead of the position:

   >>> Fraction(item_2.amount)
   Fraction(2, 1)
   >>> f"Use {item_2.amount} {item_2.unit} fresh {item_2.ingredient}"
   'Use 2 cups fresh Kumquat'
   

How it works...

The NamedTuple class definition introduces a core concept from Chapter 7, Basics of Classes and Objects. We've extended the base class definition to add unique features for our application. In this case, we've named the three attributes each Ingredient tuple must contain.

Because a NamedTuple class is a tuple, the order of the attribute names is fixed. We can use a reference like the expression item_2[0] as well as the expression item_2.ingredient. Both names refer to the item in index 0 of the tuple, item_2.

The core tuple types can be called "anonymous tuples" or maybe "index-only tuples." This can help to distinguish them from the more sophisticated "named tuples" introduced through the typing module.

Tuples are very useful as tiny containers of closely related data. Using the NamedTuple class definition makes them even easier to work with.

There's more…

We can have a mixed collection of values in a tuple or a named tuple. We need to perform conversion before we can build the tuple. It's important to remember that a tuple cannot ever be changed. It's an immutable object, similar in many ways to the way strings and numbers are immutable.

For example, we might want to work with amounts that are exact fractions. Here's a more sophisticated definition:

>>> class IngredientF(NamedTuple):
...     ingredient: str
...     amount: Fraction
...     unit: str

These objects require some care to create. If we're using a bunch of strings, we can't simply build this object from three string values; we need to convert the amount into a Fraction instance. Here's an example of creating an item using a Fraction conversion:

>>> item_3 = IngredientF('Kumquat', Fraction('2'), 'cups')

This tuple has a more useful value for the amount of each ingredient. We can now do mathematical operations on the amounts:

>>> f'{item_3.ingredient} doubled: {item_3.amount*2}'
'Kumquat doubled: 4'

It's very handy to specifically state the data type within NamedTuple. It turns out Python doesn't use the type information directly. Other tools, for example, mypy, can check the type hints in NamedTuple against the operations in the rest of the code to be sure they agree.

See also

• We'll look at class definitions in Chapter 7, Basics of Classes and Objects.