What is the difference between the following class methods?
Is it that one is static and the other is not?
class Test(object):
def method_one(self)
Methods in Python are a very, very simple thing once you understood the basics of the descriptor system. Imagine the following class:
class C(object):
def foo(self):
pass
Now let's have a look at that class in the shell:
>>> C.foo
>>> C.__dict__['foo']
As you can see if you access the foo
attribute on the class you get back an unbound method, however inside the class storage (the dict) there is a function. Why's that? The reason for this is that the class of your class implements a __getattribute__
that resolves descriptors. Sounds complex, but is not. C.foo
is roughly equivalent to this code in that special case:
>>> C.__dict__['foo'].__get__(None, C)
That's because functions have a __get__
method which makes them descriptors. If you have an instance of a class it's nearly the same, just that None
is the class instance:
>>> c = C()
>>> C.__dict__['foo'].__get__(c, C)
>
Now why does Python do that? Because the method object binds the first parameter of a function to the instance of the class. That's where self comes from. Now sometimes you don't want your class to make a function a method, that's where staticmethod
comes into play:
class C(object):
@staticmethod
def foo():
pass
The staticmethod
decorator wraps your class and implements a dummy __get__
that returns the wrapped function as function and not as a method:
>>> C.__dict__['foo'].__get__(None, C)
Hope that explains it.