Why is __init__() always called after __new__()?

Question

I'm just trying to streamline one of my classes and have introduced some functionality in the same style as the flyweight design pattern.

However, I'm a bit confused as to why __init__ is always called after __new__. I wasn't expecting this. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how I can implement this functionality otherwise? (Apart from putting the implementation into the __new__ which feels quite hacky.)

Here's an example:

class A(object):
    _dict = dict()

    def __new__(cls):
        if 'key' in A._dict:
            print "EXISTS"
            return A._dict['key']
        else:
            print "NEW"
            return super(A, cls).__new__(cls)

    def __init__(self):
        print "INIT"
        A._dict['key'] = self
        print ""

a1 = A()
a2 = A()
a3 = A()

Outputs:

NEW
INIT

EXISTS
INIT

EXISTS
INIT

Why?

Solution 1

Use __new__ when you need to control the creation of a new instance.

Use __init__ when you need to control initialization of a new instance.

__new__ is the first step of instance creation. It's called first, and is responsible for returning a new instance of your class.

In contrast, __init__ doesn't return anything; it's only responsible for initializing the instance after it's been created.

In general, you shouldn't need to override __new__ unless you're subclassing an immutable type like str, int, unicode or tuple.

From April 2008 post: When to use __new__ vs. __init__? on mail.python.org.

You should consider that what you are trying to do is usually done with a Factory and that's the best way to do it. Using __new__ is not a good clean solution so please consider the usage of a factory. Here's a good example: ActiveState Fᴀᴄᴛᴏʀʏ ᴘᴀᴛᴛᴇʀɴ Recipe.

Solution 2

__new__ is static class method, while __init__ is instance method. __new__ has to create the instance first, so __init__ can initialize it. Note that __init__ takes self as parameter. Until you create instance there is no self.

Now, I gather, that you're trying to implement singleton pattern in Python. There are a few ways to do that.

Also, as of Python 2.6, you can use class decorators.

def singleton(cls):
    instances = {}
    def getinstance():
        if cls not in instances:
            instances[cls] = cls()
        return instances[cls]
    return getinstance

@singleton
class MyClass:
  ...

Solution 3

In most well-known OO languages, an expression like SomeClass(arg1, arg2) will allocate a new instance, initialise the instance's attributes, and then return it.

In most well-known OO languages, the "initialise the instance's attributes" part can be customised for each class by defining a constructor, which is basically just a block of code that operates on the new instance (using the arguments provided to the constructor expression) to set up whatever initial conditions are desired. In Python, this corresponds to the class' __init__ method.

Python's __new__ is nothing more and nothing less than similar per-class customisation of the "allocate a new instance" part. This of course allows you to do unusual things such as returning an existing instance rather than allocating a new one. So in Python, we shouldn't really think of this part as necessarily involving allocation; all that we require is that __new__ comes up with a suitable instance from somewhere.

But it's still only half of the job, and there's no way for the Python system to know that sometimes you want to run the other half of the job (__init__) afterwards and sometimes you don't. If you want that behavior, you have to say so explicitly.

Often, you can refactor so you only need __new__, or so you don't need __new__, or so that __init__ behaves differently on an already-initialised object. But if you really want to, Python does actually allow you to redefine "the job", so that SomeClass(arg1, arg2) doesn't necessarily call __new__ followed by __init__. To do this, you need to create a metaclass, and define its __call__ method.

A metaclass is just the class of a class. And a class' __call__ method controls what happens when you call instances of the class. So a metaclass' __call__ method controls what happens when you call a class; i.e. it allows you to redefine the instance-creation mechanism from start to finish. This is the level at which you can most elegantly implement a completely non-standard instance creation process such as the singleton pattern. In fact, with less than 10 lines of code you can implement a Singleton metaclass that then doesn't even require you to futz with __new__ at all, and can turn any otherwise-normal class into a singleton by simply adding __metaclass__ = Singleton!

class Singleton(type):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(Singleton, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.__instance = None
    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if self.__instance is None:
            self.__instance = super(Singleton, self).__call__(*args, **kwargs)
        return self.__instance

However this is probably deeper magic than is really warranted for this situation!

Solution 4

To quote the documentation:

Typical implementations create a new instance of the class by invoking the superclass's __new__() method using "super(currentclass, cls).__new__(cls[, ...])"with appropriate arguments and then modifying the newly-created instance as necessary before returning it.

...

If __new__() does not return an instance of cls, then the new instance's __init__() method will not be invoked.

__new__() is intended mainly to allow subclasses of immutable types (like int, str, or tuple) to customize instance creation.

Solution 5

When __new__ returns instance of the same class, __init__ is run afterwards on returned object. I.e. you can NOT use __new__ to prevent __init__ from being run. Even if you return previously created object from __new__, it will be double (triple, etc...) initialized by __init__ again and again.

Here is the generic approach to Singleton pattern which extends vartec answer above and fixes it:

def SingletonClass(cls):
    class Single(cls):
        __doc__ = cls.__doc__
        _initialized = False
        _instance = None

        def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
            if not cls._instance:
                cls._instance = super(Single, cls).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
            return cls._instance

        def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
            if self._initialized:
                return
            super(Single, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
            self.__class__._initialized = True  # Its crucial to set this variable on the class!
    return Single

Full story is here.

Another approach, which in fact involves __new__ is to use classmethods:

class Singleton(object):
    __initialized = False

    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if not cls.__initialized:
            cls.__init__(*args, **kwargs)
            cls.__initialized = True
        return cls


class MyClass(Singleton):
    @classmethod
    def __init__(cls, x, y):
        print "init is here"

    @classmethod
    def do(cls):
        print "doing stuff"

Please pay attention, that with this approach you need to decorate ALL of your methods with @classmethod, because you'll never use any real instance of MyClass.

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