Is there a simple, elegant way to define singletons? [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can override the __new__ method like this:

class Singleton(object):
    _instance = None
    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if not cls._instance:
            cls._instance = super(Singleton, cls).__new__(
                                cls, *args, **kwargs)
        return cls._instance


if __name__ == '__main__':
    s1 = Singleton()
    s2 = Singleton()
    if (id(s1) == id(s2)):
        print "Same"
    else:
        print "Different"

Answer 2

class Singleton(object[,...]):

    staticVar1 = None
    staticVar2 = None

    def __init__(self):
        if self.__class__.staticVar1==None :
            # create class instance variable for instantiation of class
            # assign class instance variable values to class static variables
        else:
            # assign class static variable values to class instance variables

Answer 3

OK, singleton could be good or evil, I know. This is my implementation, and I simply extend a classic approach to introduce a cache inside and produce many instances of a different type or, many instances of same type, but with different arguments.

I called it Singleton_group, because it groups similar instances together and prevent that an object of the same class, with same arguments, could be created:

# Peppelinux's cached singleton
class Singleton_group(object):
    __instances_args_dict = {}
    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if not cls.__instances_args_dict.get((cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs))):
            cls.__instances_args_dict[(cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs))] = super(Singleton_group, cls).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
        return cls.__instances_args_dict.get((cls.__name__, args, str(kwargs)))


# It's a dummy real world use example:
class test(Singleton_group):
    def __init__(self, salute):
        self.salute = salute

a = test('bye')
b = test('hi')
c = test('bye')
d = test('hi')
e = test('goodbye')
f = test('goodbye')

id(a)
3070148780L

id(b)
3070148908L

id(c)
3070148780L

b == d
True


b._Singleton_group__instances_args_dict

{('test', ('bye',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec0ac>,
 ('test', ('goodbye',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec32c>,
 ('test', ('hi',), '{}'): <__main__.test object at 0xb6fec12c>}

Every object carries the singleton cache... This could be evil, but it works great for some :)

Answer 4

Here's my own implementation of singletons. All you have to do is decorate the class; to get the singleton, you then have to use the Instance method. Here's an example:

@Singleton
class Foo:
   def __init__(self):
       print 'Foo created'

f = Foo() # Error, this isn't how you get the instance of a singleton

f = Foo.instance() # Good. Being explicit is in line with the Python Zen
g = Foo.instance() # Returns already created instance

print f is g # True

And here's the code:

class Singleton:
    """
    A non-thread-safe helper class to ease implementing singletons.
    This should be used as a decorator -- not a metaclass -- to the
    class that should be a singleton.

    The decorated class can define one `__init__` function that
    takes only the `self` argument. Also, the decorated class cannot be
    inherited from. Other than that, there are no restrictions that apply
    to the decorated class.

    To get the singleton instance, use the `instance` method. Trying
    to use `__call__` will result in a `TypeError` being raised.

    """

    def __init__(self, decorated):
        self._decorated = decorated

    def instance(self):
        """
        Returns the singleton instance. Upon its first call, it creates a
        new instance of the decorated class and calls its `__init__` method.
        On all subsequent calls, the already created instance is returned.

        """
        try:
            return self._instance
        except AttributeError:
            self._instance = self._decorated()
            return self._instance

    def __call__(self):
        raise TypeError('Singletons must be accessed through `instance()`.')

    def __instancecheck__(self, inst):
        return isinstance(inst, self._decorated)

Answer 5

The module approach works well. If I absolutely need a singleton I prefer the Metaclass approach.

class Singleton(type):
    def __init__(cls, name, bases, dict):
        super(Singleton, cls).__init__(name, bases, dict)
        cls.instance = None 

    def __call__(cls,*args,**kw):
        if cls.instance is None:
            cls.instance = super(Singleton, cls).__call__(*args, **kw)
        return cls.instance

class MyClass(object):
    __metaclass__ = Singleton

Answer 6

A slightly different approach to implement the singleton in Python is the borg pattern by Alex Martelli (Google employee and Python genius).

class Borg:
    __shared_state = {}
    def __init__(self):
        self.__dict__ = self.__shared_state

So instead of forcing all instances to have the same identity, they share state.