Managing Attributes with Python’s Property Decorator: Creating Read-Only and Read-Write Properties with Input Validation

Introduction

Python’s property decorator allows you to define methods that act like attributes, providing a way to manage how the attribute is accessed and modified. The property decorator can be used to make a method read-only, write-only, or read-write, and can also be used to validate inputs or perform computations on the fly.

In this article, we’ll explore how to use the property decorator in Python to create read-only and read-write properties, and perform input validation.

Creating a read-only property

Let’s start with a simple example: a class that has a name attribute. We can make this attribute read-only by using the property decorator as follows:

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self._name = name

    @property
    def name(self):
        return self._name

In this updated version of the Person class, the name attribute is now accessed through a method called name(), which is decorated with the @property decorator. This means that the name method now acts like an attribute, and can be accessed using dot notation:

p = Person('Alice')…