{"id":431,"date":"2020-10-10T10:14:38","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T10:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pythontutorial.net\/?page_id=431"},"modified":"2025-03-28T01:31:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T01:31:47","slug":"python-private-attributes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pythontutorial.net\/python-oop\/python-private-attributes\/","title":{"rendered":"Python Private Attributes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summary<\/strong>: in this tutorial, you’ll learn about encapsulation and how to use private attributes to accomplish encapsulation in Python.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction to encapsulation in Python #<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Encapsulation is one of the four fundamental concepts in object-oriented programming including abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encapsulation is the packing of data and functions<\/a> that work on that data within a single object. By doing so, you can hide the internal state of the object from the outside. This is known as information hiding<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A class<\/a> is an example of encapsulation. A class bundles data and methods into a single unit. And a class provides the access to its attributes via methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of information hiding is that if you have an attribute that isn’t visible to the outside, you can control the access to its value to make sure your object is always has a valid state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s take a look at an example to better understand the encapsulation concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Python encapsulation example #<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The following defines the Counter<\/code> class:<\/p>\n\n\n

class<\/span> Counter<\/span>:<\/span>\n    def<\/span> __init__<\/span>(self)<\/span>:<\/span>\n        self.current = 0<\/span>\n\n    def<\/span> increment<\/span>(self)<\/span>:<\/span>\n        self.current += 1<\/span>\n\n    def<\/span> value<\/span>(self)<\/span>:<\/span>\n        return<\/span> self.current\n\n    def<\/span> reset<\/span>(self)<\/span>:<\/span>\n        self.current = 0<\/span>\n<\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> Python<\/span> (<\/span>python<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n\n\n
The Counter<\/code> class has one attribute called current<\/code> which defaults to zero. And it has three methods: <\/p>\n\n\n\n