"Why namedtuples?"

If you had asked me to explain all I knew about Python's namedtuple class at the start of this year, I would have probably muttered something about mutability and trailed off into an uncomfortable silence. The fact of the matter was, I had seen them used once or twice but never really understood the reason they were used. Hopefully by the end of this entry I can explain at least a couple of places you might consider using them over the typical Python class.

One of my favorite ways to be introduced to any new concept is by seeing the simplest example that still motivates its use. In the case of namedtuples, I'm partial to the example below, which compares two proposed implementations of a latitude/longitude coordinate -- something I get a lot of experience with in my day to day work life -- and does some basic manipulation of their contents.

# The primitive approach
lat_lng = (37.78, -122.40)
print 'The latitude is %f' % lat_lng[0]
print 'The longitude is %f' % lat_lng[1]

# The glorious namedtuple
LatLng = namedtuple('LatLng', ['latitude', 'longitude'])
lat_lng = LatLng(37.78, -122.40)
print 'The latitude is %f' % lat_lng.latitude
print 'The longitude is %f' % lat_lng.longitude

By itself, this example is a little forced, but you can already see some benefits:

• increased readability of the print statements instead of cryptic indexing
• the presence of a LatLng class that gives a clear specification (instead of the next person who comes along representing it as a dictionary with two keys, or two floats, and so on...)

So you may well be asking yourself...why not just make a LatLng class?

An obvious question indeed. If we just stopped at the first example, you could make a strong argument that a normal Python LatLng class with two attributes would do everything we wanted without all this fuss. This brings us to the most important difference between namedtuples and normal Python classes -- attributes in namedtuple subclasses are immutable once created, much like the tuples for which the class is named.

>>> LatLng = namedtuple('LatLng', ['latitude', 'longitude'])
>>> lat_lng = LatLng(37.78, -122.40) 
>>> lat_lng.latitude = 9.23
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: can't set attribute

Why do I care about mutability?

If you're anything like me, you're probably quite used to the idea of writing highly stateful programs. Maybe you aren't even sure why some immutable class is the subject of this entire blog entry...all the good stuff gets done by the smart mutation of objects anyway, right? Well let me try to convince you of the merits of immutability with a couple examples, hard-won lessons I've taught myself several times over.

Anyone who has spent more than a couple weeks programming Python has probably been bitten by accidentally modifying a data structure they thought was fixed:

def totally_innocent_function(movie_list):
    movie_list.append('You Got Served')

the_best_movies_of_all_time = ['The Godfather', 'Citizen Kane', '2001: A Space Odyssey']
totally_innocent_function(the_best_movies_of_all_time)

Just because you think your data structure is properly structured and validated doesn't prevent a well intentioned person from later modifying it, possibly even in a way where you don't ever realize it happened. If you are lucky, this gets noticed and fixed immediately. If you're unlucky, the bug silently festers, doing who-knows-what to your application. In my experience, the original author and the well intentioned person who breaks the code later on are typically both myself. Coding is complicated and allowing your data to be mutable when you don't want it to be can lead to trouble.

And what if I need more than simple attributes?

In most of my personal uses of namedtuples, I inevitably have some additional functionality I wanted from the class -- often some computed result of the various attributes built into the class. Sounds an awful lot like a property right? Give something like the following a shot. You get all the benefits of knowing your core data isn't going to be accidentally modified while also getting fancy properties on the side!

{% include_code namedtuple_properties.py %}

Everything in moderation

So I hope I've at least suggested to you the benefits of trying out namedtuples, for both code readability and safety. It's certainly possible to take this too far, but at the very least it's an excellent way to learn a new approach and get to investigate some of Python's more niche features.