Classes and Objects

Classes are fundamental to object-oriented programming languages such as Python. A class is simply a template for creating objects. Classes define an object's various properties and specify the things you can do with that object. So far in this book, you have been relying on classes defined in the Python standard library or built into the Python programming language itself. For example, in Exercise 37, Finding the System Date of Chapter 3, Executing Python – Programs, Algorithms, and Functions, you used the datetime class to retrieve the current date. You will start off by exploring some more of the classes you've already been using. This can be performed in a Python shell or Jupyter Notebook.

Create a new integer object called x in a Python console:

>>> x = 10
>>> x
10

You can see the class that x was created from by calling the type function:

>>> type(x)
<class 'int'>

The integer class...