Entry

Is there such a thing as a toString() for objects, like java has, that will be automatically called when an object is used "as a string"?

Jun 9th, 2000 00:31
unknown unknown, Andres Corrada-Emmanuel, Quinn Dunkan

Problem:

ie. when you create an object, __init__ gets called automatically, so if 
I say:

x = Spam()
print x

Can I put a method in Spam such that it will print out something useful 
based on the class fields rather than the ugly data definition?

Solution:

Yes, it's __str__  See the Language Reference 3.3 "Special method names" 
for all the double-underscore magic you can accomplish.

In your class definition for Spam include a __str__ method, something 
like the following:

class Spam:
  .
  .
  .
  def __str__( self ):
     return self.someAttribute