Why am I getting an error based on my parameterized constructor being called when I try to instantiate an object using my default constructor?

Question

Any thoughts as to why I am unable to call the default constructor?

Here is a small part of the class so that you can see the available constructors and some of the data members:

class TweetExplorer:

    CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH = constants.CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH

    # Authorization keys
    API_KEY = ''
    API_SECRET_KEY = ''
    ACCESS_TOKEN = ''
    ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = ''

    OUTPUT_PATH = '' 

    API_ACCESS = 0

    def __init__(self):

        self.OUTPUT_PATH = constants.OUTPUT_PATH 
        self.CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH = constants.OUTPUT_PATH


def __init__(self, api_key, api_secret_key, access_token, access_token_secret):

    self.API_KEY = api_key
    self.API_SECRET_KEY = api_secret_key
    self.ACCESS_TOKEN = access_token
    self.ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = access_token_secret

    try: 
        self.check_access()
    except Exception as ex:
        print(ex)

    self.OUTPUT_PATH = constants.OUTPUT_PATH 

So, in the same file, I attempt to instantiate an instance of the class by using the default constructor:

if __name__ == '__main__':

    explorer = TweetExplorer()

Instead of calling the default constructor, I get the following error:

Message=init() missing 4 required positional arguments: 'api_key', 'api_secret_key', 'access_token', and 'access_token_secret' Source=C:\source\repos\TweetExplorer\TweetExplorer.py StackTrace: File "C:\source\repos\TweetExplorer\TweetExplorer.py", line 499, in explorer = TweetExplorer()

Answer 1

A pattern I have used before for providing multiple constructors is to use classmethods:

class TweetExplorer:

    CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH = constants.CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH
    API_ACCESS = 0

    def __init__(self):
        self.OUTPUT_PATH = constants.OUTPUT_PATH
        self.CLEAN_OUTPUT_PATH = constants.OUTPUT_PATH
        self.API_KEY = ''
        self.API_SECRET_KEY = ''
        self.ACCESS_TOKEN = ''
        self.ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = ''

    @classmethod
    def with_credentials(cls, api_key, api_secret_key, access_token, access_token_secret):
        obj = cls()

        obj.API_KEY = api_key
        obj.API_SECRET_KEY = api_secret_key
        obj.ACCESS_TOKEN = access_token
        obj.ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = access_token_secret

        try:
            obj.check_access()
        except Exception as ex:
            print(ex)

        return obj

Now you can initialise TweetExplorer without any arguments

TweetExplorer()

Or with the creds

TweetExplorer.with_credentials(api_key, api_secret_key, access_token, access_token_secret)