Python: if more than one of three things is true, return false

Question

I\'m writing a django model that allows my site to have coupons.

Coupons can have three types: lifetime account voucher, certain period of months voucher, certain numb

Answer 1

If you have Python2.7 or newer

from collections import Counter
items_to_test = (self.months, self.dollars, self.lifetime)
true_count = Counter(map(bool, items_to_test))[True]

Answer 2

if (self.months && (self.dollars || self.lifetime))  || (self.dollars && (self.months || self.lifetime)) || (self.lifetime && (self.dollars || self.months))
    raise ValueError("Coupon can be valid for only one of: months, lifetime, or dollars") 

Edit:

I did a quick circuit mimization using a Karnaugh map (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map). It ends up this is the smallest possible function with boolean logic:

if((self.months && self.dollars) || (self.dollars && self.lifetime) || (self.lifetime && self.months))
    raise ValueError("Coupon can be valid for only one of: months, lifetime, or dollars") 

Logically both my statements are equivelant but the second one is technically faster / more efficient.

Edit #2: If anyone is interested here is the K-Map

A | B | C | f(A, B, C)
----------------------
0 | 0 | 0 |     0
----------------------
0 | 0 | 1 |     0
----------------------
0 | 1 | 0 |     0
----------------------
0 | 1 | 1 |     1
----------------------
1 | 0 | 0 |     0
----------------------
1 | 0 | 1 |     1
----------------------
1 | 1 | 0 |     1
----------------------
1 | 1 | 1 |     1

Which Reduces to:

   C\AB
     -----------------
     | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |     
     -----------------      OR      AB + BC + AC
     | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
     -----------------

Answer 3

How about

if len(filter([self.months, self.dollars, self.lifetime])) > 1:
...

I find it just as readable as a list comprehension with an if clause, and more concise.

Answer 4

Your code looks fine. Here's why:

1.) You wrote it, and you're the one describing the logic. You can play all sort of syntactical tricks to cut down the lines of code (true_count += 1 if self.months else 0, huge if statement, etc.), but I think the way you have it is perfect because it's what you first thought of when trying to describe the logic.

Leave the cute code for the programming challenges, this is the real world.

2.) If you ever decide that you need to add another type of coupon value type, you know exactly what you need to do: add another if statement. In one complex if statement, you'd end up with a harder task to do this.

Answer 5

I think spreading this over a few lines is fine - this makes it easier to maintain if there were more attributes to test in the future. Using len or sum feels a bit too obfuscated

# Ensure that only one of these values is set
true_count = 0
true_count += bool(self.months)
true_count += bool(self.dollars)
true_count += bool(self.lifetime)

Answer 6

bool is a subclass of int because Python originally lacked bool, using int for Boolean, so:

if self.months + self.dollars + self.lifetime > 1:
    ...

This works because False == 0 and True == 1 are both true.