Python: Master the Art of Design Patterns

Singletons and metaclasses

Let's start with a brief introduction to metaclasses. A metaclass is a class of a class, which means that the class is an instance of its metaclass. With metaclasses, programmers get an opportunity to create classes of their own type from the predefined Python classes. For instance, if you have an object, MyClass, you can create a metaclass, MyKls, that redefines the behavior of MyClass to the way that you need. Let's understand them in detail.

In Python, everything is an object. If we say a=5, then type(a) returns <type 'int'>, which means a is of the int type. However, type(int) returns <type 'type'>, which suggests the presence of a metaclass as int is a class of the type type.

The definition of class is decided by ...