How can I represent an 'Enum' in Python?

Answer 1

Alexandru's suggestion of using class constants for enums works quite well.

I also like to add a dictionary for each set of constants to lookup a human-readable string representation.

This serves two purposes: a) it provides a simple way to pretty-print your enum and b) the dictionary logically groups the constants so that you can test for membership.

class Animal:    
  TYPE_DOG = 1
  TYPE_CAT = 2

  type2str = {
    TYPE_DOG: "dog",
    TYPE_CAT: "cat"
  }

  def __init__(self, type_):
    assert type_ in self.type2str.keys()
    self._type = type_

  def __repr__(self):
    return "<%s type=%s>" % (
        self.__class__.__name__, self.type2str[self._type].upper())