How to call python function with optional parameters

Question

I've got the following function:

def create(self, name, page=5, opt1=False, opt2=False,
                        opt3=False,
                        opt4=False,
                        opt5=False,
                        opt6=False,
                        *parameters):

Is it possible to assign only one of the optional parameters, and some *parameters? e.g.

create('some name', opt4=True, 1, 2, 3) # I need 1, 2, 3 to be assigned to *parameters

Most of the time, I don't need to change the values of opt1...opt6, I only need to change maybe one of them, and assign some other *parameters. So I am looking for a way to avoid setting opt1...opt6 if I don't want to change their default value.

how will use use 1 2 and 3, how is a user to know what they do? — Padraic Cunningham
– Padraic Cunningham, Commented Jul 11, 2015 at 10:53
@PadraicCunningham They could be any arbitrary list of numbers. Not necessarily 1, 2, 3. They could be 34, 100, 12, 18. — Meysam
– Meysam, Commented Jul 11, 2015 at 11:00
what I meant was the optional *parameters is going to be treated as an iterable in your code so you could make another keyword arg nums=None and take an iterable as an argument — Padraic Cunningham
– Padraic Cunningham, Commented Jul 11, 2015 at 11:08

jimifiki · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-11 11:00:00Z

1

Well for sure this is not nice, but you can probably work on variants of this

def create(name, page=5, opt1=False, opt2=False,
           opt3=False,
           opt4=False,
           opt5=False,
           opt6=False,
           *parameters):
    print(parameters)
    print(page)
    print(opt4)

myArgs = dict(zip(['page','opt1','opt2','opt3','opt4','opt5','opt6'],create.func_defaults))

myArgs['opt4']=True
create("MyName",**myArgs)

answered Jul 11, 2015 at 11:00

jimifiki

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Comments

Anand S Kumar · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-11 10:46:25Z

In Python 3.x, Try putting parameters before any of the default arguments, example -

def create(self, name , *parameters, page=5, opt1=False, 
                                  opt2=False,opt3=False,
                                  opt4=False,opt5=False,
                                  opt6=False):
    print(parameters)
    print(page)
    print(opt4)

In [31]: create('C', 'some name', 1, 2, 3, opt4 = True)
(1, 2, 3)
5
True

Please understand that with this method, you can only call the arguments with default value using named arguments.

For Python 2.x , you can try using *parameters and then **kwargs for the default parameters -

>>> def create(self, name, *parameters, **kwargs):
...     kwargs.setdefault('opt4',False)  #You will need to do for all such parameters.
...     print(parameters)
...     print(kwargs['opt4'])
... 
>>> create('C', 'some name', 1, 2, 3, opt4 = True)
(1, 2, 3)
True

Again, only way to set the values for opt1...opt6 or page , etc would be using named arguments.

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