Python 3.6.0 Class Inheritance

Question

class Animal:
def __init__(self, name, species): 
 self.name = name
 self.species = species
 def getName(self):
 return self.name
 def getSpecies(self):
 return self.species
 def __del__(self):
 print ("This came from del method")
class Dog(Animal):
 pass
 def __init__(self, name, isBig):
 Animal.__init__(self, name, "Dog")
 self.isBig = isBig

I've been playing around with understanding Classes and Child Classes and ran into the following. When instantiating

dog = Dog("Bob", True)

and try to access the method getName() from the parent, Animal, class I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in <module>
dog.getName()
AttributeError: Dog instance has no attribute 'getName'

What is preventing me from directly accessing methods of the parent class?

• Blorgbeard: Works for me when I fix your indentation: repl.it/repls/PleasingRealisticEel
• Daniel Roseman: Your indentation is broken here and probably wrong in your task code. I expect you won't be able to access getName on a base Animal instance either.
• JacobIRR: I indented your code in an edit and it should work fine. Please close this if it does work
• Daniel Roseman: Also note, writing getters and setters is not Pythonic.
• Barmar: One of the first things you should have learned when starting Python is that it's critical to get the indentation correct.

Answer 1

Don't forget that indentation matters in Python!

Here's what your code should look like for all the methods to be in the Animal class:

class Animal:
 def __init__(self, name, species): 
 self.name = name
 self.species = species
 def getName(self):
 return self.name
 def getSpecies(self):
 return self.species
 def __del__(self):
 print ("This came from del method")

If you miss an indentation block, Python thinks you're done with your class definition.