Using dataclasses with dependent attributes via property

Question

I have a class, for example Circle, which has dependent attributes, radius and circumference. It makes sense to use a dataclass<

Answer 1

For starters, you could set the attributes in the __init__ method as follows:

from dataclasses import dataclass, InitVar
import math


@dataclass(frozen=True, order=True)
class CircleWithFrozenDataclass:
    radius: float = 0
    circumference: float = 0

    def __init__(self, radius=0, circumference=0):
        super().__init__()
        if circumference:
            object.__setattr__(self, 'circumference', circumference)
            object.__setattr__(self, 'radius', circumference / (2 * math.pi))
        if radius:
            object.__setattr__(self, 'radius', radius)
            object.__setattr__(self, 'circumference', 2 * math.pi * radius)

This will still provide you with all the helpful __eq__, __repr__, __hash__, and ordering method injections. While object.__setattr__ looks ugly, note that the CPython implementation itself uses object.__setattr__ to set attributes when injecting the generated __init__ method for a frozen dataclass.

If you really want to get rid of object.__setattr__, you can set frozen=False (the default) and override the __setattr__ method yourself. This is copying how the frozen feature of dataclasses is implemented in CPython. Note that you will also have to turn on unsafe_hash=True as __hash__ is no longer injected since frozen=False.

@dataclass(unsafe_hash=True, order=True)
class CircleUsingDataclass:
    radius: float = 0
    circumference: float = 0

    _initialized: InitVar[bool] = False

    def __init__(self, radius=0, circumference=0):
        super().__init__()
        if circumference:
            self.circumference = circumference
            self.radius = circumference / (2 * math.pi)
        if radius:
            self.radius = radius
            self.circumference = 2 * math.pi * radius
        self._initialized = True

    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
        if self._initialized and \
            (type(self) is __class__ or name in ['radius', 'circumference']):
            raise AttributeError(f"cannot assign to field {name!r}")
        super().__setattr__(name, value)

    def __delattr__(self, name, value):
        if self._initialized and \
            (type(self) is __class__ or name in ['radius', 'circumference']):
            raise AttributeError(f"cannot delete field {name!r}")
        super().__delattr__(name, value)

In my opinion, freezing should only happen after the __init__ by default, but for now I will probably use the first approach.