python property decorator
decorator, python
Solution
It's simply syntactic sugar. It allows a method call to look like a variable access or assignment.
One way this can be useful is if you want to change something that previously was a simple variable to something that's actually computed or validated with other code. If you make it a property, you can do this without breaking any existing code. Another way is for caching, lazy initialization, etc., of object attributes.
Problem
Possible Duplicate: Real world example about how to use property feature in python? I have a question about the decorator `@property` that I've seen in the following code. Could someone be kind enough to completely explain why someone would use the `@property` decorator? I know `@property` is equivalent to `isActive = property(isActive)` but what does the method property actually do to it's parameter? If I were to call the `isActive` method from the `InputCell` class what would actually happen? Thanks in advance. ``` class InputCell(object): def __init__(self, ix, iy, inputData): self.ix = ix self.iy = iy self.InputData = inputData @property def isActive(self): return self.InputData[self.ix][self.iy] ```