How to use enum class in Python with examples

In this tutorial I will give you an overview on Python enum class and different python script examples to declare and access Enum members

Overview on Python enum class

• An enumeration is a set of symbolic names (members) bound to unique, constant values.
• The enum module provides an implementation of an enumeration type, with iteration and comparison capabilities.
• It can be used to create well-defined symbols for values, instead of using literal strings or integers.
• This module defines four enumeration classes that can be used to define unique sets of names and values: Enum, IntEnum, Flag, and IntFlag.
• It also defines one decorator, unique(), and one helper, auto.

Creating Enumerations

• A new enumeration is defined using the class syntax by subclassing Enum and adding class attributes describing the values.
• The members of the Enum are converted to instances as the class is parsed.
• Each instance has a name property corresponding to the member name and a value property corresponding to the value assigned to the name in the class definition.

# Define an enumeration subclass Enum
from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

Here,

• The class errorcode is an enumeration (or enum)
• The attributes errorcode.success, errorcode.warning, errorcode.invalid etc., are enumeration members (or enum members) and are functionally constants.
• The enum members have names and values (the name of errorcode.success is success, the value of errorcode.success is 0, etc.)

Declare and print Enum members

In this sample python script I will access the enumerations and print them using different methods.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

# Print Enum member "success" for class "errorcode" using string format 
print('Exit message: {}'.format(errorcode.success))

# Print Enum member "invalid" for class "errorcode"
print('Exit message:', errorcode.invalid)

# Print Enum member "warning" for class "errorcode"
print('Exit message:', errorcode(1))

The output from this script:

# python3 create_enum.py
Exit message: errorcode.success
Exit message: errorcode.invalid
Exit message: errorcode.warning

Print Enum members as string type

To print enum members as string type you can use str() function. The default type of an enumeration member is the enumeration it belongs to:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

# Print default type
print('Before: ', type(errorcode.invalid))

# Change the type to string
enum_str = str(errorcode.invalid)

# Check type of variable
print('After: ', type(enum_str))

The output from this script:

# python3 create_enum.py
Before:  <enum 'errorcode'>
After:  <class 'str'>

Print IntEnum members as Integers type

Similarly to print Enum members as Integers we can use int() function but we must also use IntEnum subclass instead of Enum

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import IntEnum

class errorcode(IntEnum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

# Print default type
print('Before: ', type(errorcode.invalid))

# Change the type to string
enum_int = int(errorcode.invalid)

# Check type of variable
print('After: ', type(enum_int))

The output from this script:

# python3 create_enum.py
Before:  <enum 'errorcode'>
After:  <class 'int'>

Print Enum member's properties

The members of the Enum are converted to instances as the class is parsed. Each instance has a name property corresponding to the member name and a value property corresponding to the value assigned to the name in the class definition.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

# Different method to access the enum members and it's properties
print('Member Name:', errorcode.success.name, ', Member Value:', errorcode.success.value)
print('Member Name:', errorcode(1).name, ', Member Value:', errorcode(1).value)

Output from this script:

#  python3 create_enum.py
Member Name: success , Member Value: 0
Member Name: warning , Member Value: 1

Print Enum member as repr

The repr() function returns a printable representation of the given object

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

print('repr representation: ',repr(errorcode.success))

The output from this example script:

# python3 create_enum.py
repr representation:  <errorcode.success: 0>

Print Enum member as iterable

Enumerations support iteration, in definition order. Iterating over the enum class produces the individual members of the enumeration.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

class errorcode(Enum):
    success = 0
    warning = 1
    invalid = 2

for member in errorcode:
    print(member.name, '=', member.value)

The output from this script shows the members are produced in the order they are declared in the class definition. The names and values are not used to sort them in any way.

# python3 create_enum.py
success = 0
warning = 1
invalid = 2

Creating Enumerations Programmatically

In some cases, it is more convenient to create enumerations programmatically, rather than hard-coding them in a class definition. For those situations, Enum also supports passing the member names and values to the class constructor.

Syntax:

Enum(value='NewEnumName', names=<...>, *, module='...', qualname='...', type=<mixed-in class>, start=1)

The value argument is the name of the enumeration, which is used to build the representation of members. The names argument lists the members of the enumeration. When a single string is passed, it is split on whitespace and commas, and the resulting tokens are used as names for the members, which are automatically assigned values starting with 1.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

errorcode = Enum (
        value = 'Exit Code',
        names = ('success warning invalid'),
        )

# Print single member
print('Member: ', errorcode.success)

# Iterate over all the members
print('\nAll members:')
for member in errorcode:
    print(member.name, '=', member.value)

Output from this script:

# python3 create_enum.py
Member:  Exit Code.success

All members:
success = 1
warning = 2
invalid = 3

The reason for defaulting to 1 as the starting number and not 0 is that 0 is False in a boolean sense, but enum members all evaluate to True.

For more control over the values associated with members, the names string can be replaced with a sequence of two-part tuples or a dictionary mapping names to values.
In this example, a list of two-part tuples is given instead of a single string containing only the member names. This makes it possible to reconstruct the "errorcode" enumeration with the members in the same order as the version we defined as hard coded values earlier.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from enum import Enum

errorcode = Enum (
        value = 'Exit Code',
        names = [
            ('success', 0),
            ('warning', 1),
            ('invalid', 2),
            ],
        )

for member in errorcode:
    print(member.name, '=', member.value)

The output from this script:

# python3 create_enum.py
success = 0
warning = 1
invalid = 2

Conclusion

In this tutorial we learned about Enum in Python and different methods to declare enum members with it's properties. We have covered major use cases of Enum and intEnum sub class but there are other content of the enum module i.e. Intflag, Flag, unique() and auto

With enum.unique() Enum class decorator that ensures only one name is bound to any one value and with enum.auto instances are replaced with an appropriate value for Enum members.

Lastly I hope this tutorial on Python enum in Linux Programming was helpful. So, let me know your suggestions and feedback using the comment section.

References

I have used below external references for this tutorial guide
The Python 3 Standard Library by Example
python.org enum