So I was following Python’s Super Considered Harmful, and went to test out his examples.

However, Example 1-3, which is supposed to show the correct way of calling super when handling __init__ methods that expect different arguments, flat-out doesn’t work.

This is what I get:

~ $ python example1-3.py 
MRO: ['E', 'C', 'A', 'D', 'B', 'object']
E arg= 10
C arg= 10
A
D arg= 10
B
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 27, in <module>
    E(arg=10)
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 24, in __init__
    super(E, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 14, in __init__
    super(C, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 4, in __init__
    super(A, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 19, in __init__
    super(D, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)
  File "Download/example1-3.py", line 9, in __init__
    super(B, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
TypeError: object.__init__() takes no parameters

It seems that object itself violates one of the best practices mentioned in the document, which is that methods which use super must accept *args and **kwargs.

Now, obviously Mr. Knight expected his examples to work, so is this something that was changed in recent versions of Python? I checked 2.6 and 2.7, and it fails on both.

So what is the correct way to deal with this problem?

Sometimes two classes may have some parameter names in common. In that case, you can’t pop the key-value pairs off of **kwargs or remove them from *args. Instead, you can define a Base class which unlike object, absorbs/ignores arguments:

class Base(object):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): pass

class A(Base):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        print "A"
        super(A, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class B(Base):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        print "B"
        super(B, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class C(A):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "C","arg=",arg
        super(C, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)

class D(B):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "D", "arg=",arg
        super(D, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)

class E(C,D):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "E", "arg=",arg
        super(E, self).__init__(arg, *args, **kwargs)

print "MRO:", [x.__name__ for x in E.__mro__]
E(10)

yields

MRO: ['E', 'C', 'A', 'D', 'B', 'Base', 'object']
E arg= 10
C arg= 10
A
D arg= 10
B

Note that for this to work, Base must be the penultimate class in the MRO.

If you’re going to have a lot of inheritence (that’s the case here) I suggest you to pass all parameters using **kwargs, and then pop them right after you use them (unless you need them in upper classes).

class First(object):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.first_arg = kwargs.pop('first_arg')
        super(First, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class Second(First):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.second_arg = kwargs.pop('second_arg')
        super(Second, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class Third(Second):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.third_arg = kwargs.pop('third_arg')
        super(Third, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

This is the simplest way to solve those kind of problems.

third = Third(first_arg=1, second_arg=2, third_arg=3)

As explained in Python’s super() considered super, one way is to have class eat the arguments it requires, and pass the rest on. Thus, when the call-chain reaches object, all arguments have been eaten, and object.__init__ will be called without arguments (as it expects). So your code should look like this:

class A(object):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        print "A"
        super(A, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class B(object):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        print "B"
        super(B, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class C(A):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "C","arg=",arg
        super(C, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class D(B):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "D", "arg=",arg
        super(D, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class E(C,D):
    def __init__(self, arg, *args, **kwargs):
        print "E", "arg=",arg
        super(E, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

print "MRO:", [x.__name__ for x in E.__mro__]
E(10, 20, 30)