Python Access Modifiers

In most of the object-oriented languages access modifiers are used to limit the access to the variables and functions of a class. Most of the languages use three types of access modifiers, they are - private, public and protected.

Just like any other object oriented programming language, access to variables or functions can also be limited in python using the access modifiers. Python makes the use of underscores to specify the access modifier for a specific data member and member function in a class.

Access modifiers play an important role to protect the data from unauthorized access as well as protecting it from getting manipulated. When inheritance is implemented there is a huge risk for the data to get destroyed(manipulated) due to transfer of unwanted data from the parent class to the child class. Therefore, it is very important to provide the right access modifiers for different data members and member functions depending upon the requirements.

Python: Types of Access Modifiers

There are 3 types of access modifiers for a class in Python. These access modifiers define how the members of the class can be accessed. Of course, any member of a class is accessible inside any member function of that same class. Moving ahead to the type of access modifiers, they are:

Access Modifier: Public

The members declared as Public are accessible from outside the Class through an object of the class.

Access Modifier: Protected

The members declared as Protected are accessible from outside the class but only in a class derived from it that is in the child or subclass.

Access Modifier: Private

These members are only accessible from within the class. No outside Access is allowed.

Time for some Examples

In this section we will provide some basic code examples for each type of access modifier.

public Access Modifier

By default, all the variables and member functions of a class are public in a python program.

# defining a class Employee
class Employee:
    # constructor
    def __init__(self, name, sal):
        self.name = name;
        self.sal = sal;

All the member variables of the class in the above code will be by default public, hence we can access them as follows:

>>> emp = Employee("Ironman", 999000);
>>> emp.sal;
999000

protected Access Modifier

According to Python convention adding a prefix _(single underscore) to a variable name makes it protected. Yes, no additional keyword required.

# defining a class Employee
class Employee:
    # constructor
    def __init__(self, name, sal):
        self._name = name;   # protected attribute 
        self._sal = sal;     # protected attribute

In the code above we have made the class variables name and sal protected by adding an _(underscore) as a prefix, so now we can access them as follows:

>>> emp = Employee("Captain", 10000);
>>> emp._sal;
10000

Similarly if there is a child class extending the class Employee then it can also access the protected member variables of the class Employee. Let's have an example:

# defining a child class
class HR(Employee):
    
    # member function task
    def task(self):
        print ("We manage Employees")

Now let's try to access protected member variable of class Employee from the class HR:

>>> hrEmp = HR("Captain", 10000);
>>> hrEmp._sal;
10000
>>> hrEmp.task();
We manage Employees

private Access Modifier

While the addition of prefix __(double underscore) results in a member variable or function becoming private.

# defining class Employee
class Employee:
    def __init__(self, name, sal):
        self.__name = name;    # private attribute 
        self.__sal = sal;      # private attribute

If we want to access the private member variable, we will get an error.

>>> emp = Employee("Bill", 10000);
>>> emp.__sal;

AttributeError: 'employee' object has no attribute '__sal'

All in one Example

Now that we have seen each access modifier in separate examples, now let's combine all that we have learned till now in one example:

# define parent class Company
class Company:
    # constructor
    def __init__(self, name, proj):
        self.name = name      # name(name of company) is public
        self._proj = proj     # proj(current project) is protected
    
    # public function to show the details
    def show(self):
        print("The code of the company is = ",self.ccode)

# define child class Emp
class Emp(Company):
    # constructor
    def __init__(self, eName, sal, cName, proj):
        # calling parent class constructor
        Company.__init__(self, cName, proj)
        self.name = eName   # public member variable
        self.__sal = sal    # private member variable
    
    # public function to show salary details
    def show_sal(self):
        print("The salary of ",self.name," is ",self.__sal,)

# creating instance of Company class
c = Company("Stark Industries", "Mark 4")
# creating instance of Employee class
e = Emp("Steve", 9999999, c.name, c._proj)

print("Welcome to ", c.name)
print("Here ", e.name," is working on ",e._proj)

# only the instance itself can change the __sal variable
# and to show the value we have created a public function show_sal()
e.show_sal()

Now the code above show the correct usage of public, private and protected member variables and methods. You can try and change a few things a run the program to see what error those changes result into.