Python Class as Class variable

Question

I am creating two classes, one which needs to hold an instance of the other. However I can not figure out how to properly initialize this.

class Buttons:
def __init__(self, number, scene):
    self.DICT = {}
    self.number = number
    self.DICT[number] = scene

def add_btn(self, number, scene):
    self.DICT[number] = scene

class Switches:
enclosure_name = ""
gatewate_name = ""
enclosure_id = 0
switch_name = ""
switch_location = ""
switch_device_id = 0
switch_mac = 0
switch_termination = 0
switch_group = 0
Buttons buttons = Buttons()

I plan to create many switches, each switch has 2 to 6 buttons. Each button has a number and an action. How can I put a Buttons variable into the switches?

Answer 1

My understanding of this is that each Switch will contain one Buttons object, which contains a dictionary that represents multiple buttons.

The Switches class is a representation of multiple switches:

Simply give each switch a buttons attribute:

class Switch:

    def __init__(self):
        self.switches = {}

    def add_switch(self, number, buttons):
        self.switches[number] = buttons

And when creating a switch pass in a Buttons object:

switches = Switches(b)
b = Buttons(2, "scene")
switches.add_switch(10, b)

And you can still access the underlying buttons of a switch. For example adding buttons to the 10th switch:

switch.switches[10].add_btn(...)

And if you want to be fancy you can implement a __getitem__ so you can index switch directly. Inside Switches :

def __getitem__(self, item):
    return self.switches[item]

With this method you can add buttons directly:

switch[10].add_btn(...)