Is it pythonic to apply decorator to __init__ function?

Question

Came across the need to do some sanity check of __init__() args. We'd like to move this sanity-checking logic into decorator.

I did some prototyping, it seems applying decorator to __init__() does work:

def my_dec(func):
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        print('a')
        func(*args, **kwargs)
    return wrapper

class testClass(object):
    @my_dec
    def __init__(self):
        print('b')

Having a decorator above __init__ seems to be slightly messy. But besides that, is there any downside to this? Anything non-pythnoic?

Answer 1

I think "pythonic" here may be subjective (And I use may lightly) but I believe keeping to the more standard approach and doing sanity checks within __init__ and keep the guessing to a minimum later on in debugging or when working with a team.

Something like this seems to do the same thing but feel more natural and is easier to follow.

def sanity_check():
    print('a')
    #do checks here
    return True #or False

class testClass(object):

    def __init__(self):
        if sanity_check():
            print('b')