I am making a chess game and wanted to make a standard piece interface/protocol. Python does not have those in the language, so what am I supposed to use? I read a bit about factories, but I'm not sure how they would help. Thanks in advance!
In short, you probably don't need to worry about it at all. Since Python uses duck typing - see also the Wikipedia article for a broader definition - if an object has the right methods, it will simply work, otherwise exceptions will be raised.
You could possibly have a Piece base class with some methods throwing NotImplementedError to indicate they need to be re-implemented:
class Piece(object):
def move(<args>):
raise NotImplementedError(optional_error_message)
class Queen(Piece):
def move(<args>):
# Specific implementation for the Queen's movements
# Calling Queen().move(<args>) will work as intended but
class Knight(Piece):
pass
# Knight().move() will raise a NotImplementedError
Alternatively, you could explicitly validate an object you receive to make sure it has all the right methods, or that it is a subclass of Piece by using isinstance or isubclass.
Note that checking the type may not be considered "Pythonic" by some and using the NotImplementedError approach or the abc module - as mentioned in this very good answer - could be preferable.
Your factory just has to produce instances of objects having the right methods on them.