Declaring a Class in Python

Learn how to declare classes in Python.

We'll cover the following

Declaration #

In Python, classes are defined as follows:

class ClassName:
    pass

The class keyword tells the compiler that we are creating a custom class, which is followed by the class name and the : sign.

All the properties and methods of the class will be defined within the class scope.

Naming rules

The following rules must be adhered to when naming classes:

  1. Must start with a letter or underscore
  2. Should only be comprised of numbers, letters, or underscores

Creating a class object

The name of the class, MyClass, will be used to instantiate an object of the class in our main program. We can create an object of a class by simply using the name of the class followed by a pair of parenthesis. It looks similar to calling a function, but Python can distinguish between the two and creates a new object of the corresponding class. An example of this is given below:

class MyClass:
    pass
obj = MyClass()  # creating a MyClass Object
print(obj)

Well done! You’ve created your first object-oriented program in Python. Printing this object, obj, will show the memory address at which this object is stored.

This is just a basic implementation of a Python class and doesn’t serve any particular purpose as it does not contain any properties or methods.