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Mastering the Art of Programming in Python 3

Class, Instance and Static Methods

Explore the distinctions between class methods, instance methods, and static methods in Python. Understand how each method type interacts with class and instance data, and learn when to use them effectively in your object-oriented programming to organize and manage code clearly.

We'll cover the following...

Introduction

There are three types of methods defined on the Python object:

  • Class method
  • Instance method
  • Static method

Let’s begin writing a class that contains all the types mentioned earlier.

Python 3.5
class MyClass:
  # Instance method
  def instancemethod(self, arg1, arg2, ...):
    return 'instance method called', self
  # Class method
  @classmethod
  def classmethod(cls, arg1, arg2, arg3):
    return 'class method called', cls
  # Static method 
  @staticmethod
  def staticmethod(arg1, arg2, arg3):
    return 'static method called'

Let’s discuss them one by one.

Instance method

The first method instanceMethod is an instance method. This type is mostly used. It can accept any number of parameters. Here, self points to an instance of MyClass when this method is ...