Initialize object from the pickle in the __init__ function

constructor, initialization, pickle, python

Solution

Doing `self=load(...)` in your `__init__` only masks the local `self` variable in the `__init__`, it does not change the instance.

You can instead control the creation of the new instance in the `__new__` method of the class.

import pickle

class Pretty(object):
    def __new__(cls, filepath=None, *args, **kwargs):
        if filepath:
            with open(filepath) as f:
               inst = pickle.load(f)
            if not isinstance(inst, cls):
               raise TypeError('Unpickled object is not of type {}'.format(cls))
        else:
            inst = super(Pretty, cls).__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
        return inst

You can do a quick instance check of the unpickled object to ensure it is actually an instance of your class, otherwise you can expect bad behavior such as the `__init__` method of your class not being called.

Problem

I have a class where I would like to instantiate the object in several ways depending on the arguments. When I pass a filepath to the function `__init__` it should restore all parameters from the object saved as a pickle file. Is there any smart way to do so, something like `self=load(...)`

Original source

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