Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By : Sulekha AloorRavi
Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By: Sulekha AloorRavi

Overview of this book

Effective and reusable code makes your application development process seamless and easily maintainable. With Python, you will have access to advanced metaprogramming features that you can use to build high-performing applications. The book starts by introducing you to the need and applications of metaprogramming, before navigating the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. Next, you will learn about simple decorators, work with metaclasses, and later focus on introspection and reflection. You’ll also delve into generics and typing before defining templates for algorithms. As you progress, you will understand your code using abstract syntax trees and explore method resolution order. This Python book also shows you how to create your own dynamic objects before structuring the objects through design patterns. Finally, you will learn simple code-generation techniques along with discovering best practices and eventually building your own applications. By the end of this learning journey, you’ll have acquired the skills and confidence you need to design and build reusable high-performing applications that can solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Fundamentals – Introduction to Object-Oriented Python and Metaprogramming
4
Part 2: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming I
11
Part 3: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming II

Chapter 10: Understanding Method Resolution Order of Inheritance

In this chapter, we will look at the concept of method resolution order (MRO) in Python 3 and how it works on inheritance.

As the name suggests, MRO is the order in which methods of a class get resolved while calling them in a program.

Throughout this chapter, we will look at understanding the MRO through a few examples, how method resolution can go wrong, and how the current Python 3 implementation handles methods defined in a class. We will be making use of MRO throughout this chapter to understand the behavior of code while inheritance is implemented in Python 3.

Why should we understand MRO? In scenarios where we are using multiple classes in Python code, we need to inherit methods from multiple parent classes or superclasses. Understanding the order in which the methods would get resolved from the existing class to its parent class helps in avoiding incorrect method calls. This in turn helps in avoiding...