Is there a more pythonic way to have multiple defaults arguments to a class?

Question

I have a class with many defaults since I can't function overload. Is there a better way than having multiple default arguments, or using kwargs?

I thought about passing a dictionary in to my class but then how do I control whether or not the necessary arguments will be passed in?

If there's a more pythonic way to have arguments be allowed without defining them all as defaults?

For example, i'm allowing many defaults:

class Editor:
    def __init__(self,
                 ffmpeg: str,
                 font_file=None,
                 font_size=148,
                 font_color="white",
                 title_length=5,
                 title_x="(w-text_w)/2",
                 title_y="(h-text_h)/2",
                 box=1,
                 box_color="black",
                 box_opacity=0.5,
                 box_border_width=25):

        self.ffmpeg = ffmpeg

        self.title s= define_title(
            font_file, font_size, font_color, title_length)

        self.box = define_box(
            box, box_color, box_opacity, box_border_width},

        self.coordinates = {"x": title_x, "y": title_y}

Where in other languages I might overload the constructor.

Answer 1

You can specify default attributes on the class object itself if you expect them to be pretty standard, which can then be obscured by re-assigning those attributes on the instance when desired. You can also create multiple constructors using @classmethod, if you want different groups of arguments to be passed in.

class Editor(object):
    font_file = None
    font_size = 148
    def __init__(self, ffmpeg=str):
        self.ffmpeg = ffmpeg
    @classmethod
    def with_box(cls, ffmpeg=str, box=1):
        new_editor = cls(ffmpeg)
        new_editor.box = box
        return new_editor

And then you would call:

Editor.with_box(ffmpeg=int, box=2)

and get back a properly box-initialized Editor instance.