In article <mailman.1034.1381575143.18130.python-l...@python.org>,
Ned Batchelder <n...@nedbatchelder.com> wrote:
> This idea that the repr can reconstruct the object always fell flat with
> me since the vast majority of classes don't have a repr that works that
> way. I look at it a little differently: the repr is meant to be as
> unambiguous as possible to a developer. It turns out that Python
> literal syntax is really good at that, so where possible, that's what's
> used. But most classes don't make an attempt to create a Python
> expression, because that's very difficult
Well, it's not actually difficult. You could imagine doing something
like:
def __repr__(self):
return "pickle.loads(%s)" % pickle.dumps(self)
and while you can paste that into a REPL, it's not really useful to most
people.
What we do with our database model layer is have the repr include the
name of the class and the primary key. So:
>>> str(u)
'roysmith'
>>> repr(u)
"<User 1000564: u'roysmith'>"
That follow's Ned's idea that reprs should be unambiguous. In this
case, if I want to reconstitute myself as an object, I can just do a
database query for user_id = 1000564.
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