List of objects as numpy array

Question

I have a class with some fields, and I want it to be represented as numpy array.

class Circle:
 def __init__(self, cX, cY, rad, color):
 self.cX = cX
 self.cY = cY
 self.rad = rad
 self.color = color
 # some methods...

I know that in order to print I should define an __str__() method. Is there a similar mechanism for numpy arrays? In particular, I want something like this:

list_of_objs = [Circle() for i in range(100)]
numpy_representatin = numpy.asarray(list_of_objs) # shape have to be (4, 100)

Thanks in advance!

UPD: forgot to mention, that all fields are assumed to be of the same type - int

Answer 1

I think the following should help you: Writing custom array containers

As mentioned in the above link:

"We can convert to a numpy array using numpy.array or numpy.asarray, which will call its __array__-method to obtain a standard numpy.ndarray."

Thus, your class could look something like

class Circle:
 def __init__(self, cX, cY, rad, color):
 self.cX = cX
 self.cY = cY
 self.rad = rad
 self.color = color
 def __array__(self):
 return np.array([self.cX, self.cY, self.rad, self.color], np.int32)
 # some methods...