Enum HOWTO

An Enum is a set of symbolic names bound to unique values. They are similar to global variables, but they offer a more useful repr(), grouping, type-safety, and a few other features.

They are most useful when you have a variable that can take one of a limited selection of values. For example, the days of the week:

>>> from enum import Enum
>>> class Weekday(Enum):
...     MONDAY = 1
...     TUESDAY = 2
...     WEDNESDAY = 3
...     THURSDAY = 4
...     FRIDAY = 5
...     SATURDAY = 6
...     SUNDAY = 7

Or perhaps the RGB primary colors:

>>> from enum import Enum
>>> class Color(Enum):
...     RED = 1
...     GREEN = 2
...     BLUE = 3

As you can see, creating an Enum is as simple as writing a class that inherits from Enum itself.

Note

Case of Enum Members

Because Enums are used to represent constants, and to help avoid issues with name clashes between mixin-class methods/attributes and enum names, we strongly recommend using UPPER_CASE names for members, and will be using that style in our examples.

Depending on the nature of the enum a member’s value may or may not be important, but either way that value can be used to get the corresponding member:

>>> Weekday(3)
<Weekday.WEDNESDAY: 3>

As you can see, the repr() of a member shows the enum name, the member name, and the value. The str() of a member shows only the enum name and member name:

>>> print(Weekday.THURSDAY)
Weekday.THURSDAY

The type of an enumeration member is the enum it belongs to:

>>> type(Weekday.MONDAY)
<enum 'Weekday'>
>>> isinstance(Weekday.FRIDAY, Weekday)
True

Enum members have an attribute that contains just their name:

>>> print(Weekday.TUESDAY.name)
TUESDAY

Likewise, they have an attribute for their value:

>>> Weekday.WEDNESDAY.value
3

Unlike many languages that treat enumerations solely as name/value pairs, Python Enums can have behavior added. For example, datetime.date has two methods for returning the weekday: weekday() and isoweekday(). The difference is that one of them counts from 0-6 and the other from 1-7. Rather than keep track of that ourselves we can add a method to the Weekday enum to extract the day from the date instance and return the matching enum member:

@classmethod
def from_date(cls, date):
    return cls(date.isoweekday())

The complete Weekday enum now looks like this:

>>> class Weekday(Enum):
...     MONDAY = 1
...     TUESDAY = 2
...     WEDNESDAY = 3
...     THURSDAY = 4
...     FRIDAY = 5
...     SATURDAY = 6
...     SUNDAY = 7
...     #
...     @classmethod
...     def from_date(cls, date):
...         return cls(date.isoweekday())

Now we can find out what today is! Observe:

>>> import datetime as dt
>>> Weekday.from_date(dt.date.today())
<Weekday.TUESDAY: 2>

Of course, if you’re reading this on some other day, you’ll see that day instead.

This Weekday enum is great if our variable only needs one day, but what if we need several? Maybe we’re writing a function to plot chores during a week, and don’t want to use a list – we could use a different type of Enum:

>>> from enum import Flag
>>> class Weekday(Flag):
...     MONDAY = 1
...     TUESDAY = 2
...     WEDNESDAY = 4
...     THURSDAY = 8
...     FRIDAY = 16
...     SATURDAY = 32
...     SUNDAY = 64

We’ve changed two things: we’re inherited from Flag, and the values are all powers of 2.

Just like the original Weekday enum above, we can have a single selection:

>>> first_week_day = Weekday.MONDAY
>>> first_week_day
<Weekday.MONDAY: 1>

But Flag also allows us to combine several members into a single variable:

>>> weekend = Weekday.SATURDAY | Weekday.SUNDAY
>>> weekend
<Weekday.SATURDAY|SUNDAY: 96>

You can even iterate over a Flag variable:

>>> for day in weekend:
...     print(day)
Weekday.SATURDAY
Weekday.SUNDAY

Okay, let’s get some chores set up:

>>> chores_for_ethan = {
...     'feed the cat': Weekday.MONDAY | Weekday.WEDNESDAY | Weekday.FRIDAY,
...     'do the dishes': Weekday.TUESDAY | Weekday.THURSDAY,
...     'answer SO questions': Weekday.SATURDAY,
...     }

And a function to display the chores for a given day:

>>> def show_chores(chores, day):
...     for chore, days in chores.items():
...         if day in days:
...             print(chore)
...
>>> show_chores(chores_for_ethan, Weekday.SATURDAY)
answer SO questions

In cases where the actual values of the members do not matter, you can save yourself some work and use auto() for the values:

>>> from enum import auto
>>> class Weekday(Flag):
...     MONDAY = auto()
...     TUESDAY = auto()
...     WEDNESDAY = auto()
...     THURSDAY = auto()
...     FRIDAY = auto()
...     SATURDAY = auto()
...     SUNDAY = auto()
...     WEEKEND = SATURDAY | SUNDAY

Programmatic access to enumeration members and their attributes

Sometimes it’s useful to access members in enumerations programmatically (i.e. situations where Color.RED won’t do because the exact color is not known at program-writing time). Enum allows such access:

>>> Color(1)
<Color.RED: 1>
>>> Color(3)
<Color.BLUE: 3>

If you want to access enum members by name, use item access:

>>> Color['RED']
<Color.RED: 1>
>>> Color['GREEN']
<Color.GREEN: 2>

If you have an enum member and need its name or value:

>>> member = Color.RED
>>> member.name
'RED'
>>> member.value
1

Duplicating enum members and values

Having two enum members with the same name is invalid:

>>> class Shape(Enum):
...     SQUARE = 2
...     SQUARE = 3
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: 'SQUARE' already defined as 2

However, an enum member can have other names associated with it. Given two entries A and B with the same value (and A defined first), B is an alias for the member A. By-value lookup of the value of A will return the member A. By-name lookup of A will return the member A. By-name lookup of B will also return the member A:

>>> class Shape(Enum):
...     SQUARE = 2
...     DIAMOND = 1
...     CIRCLE = 3
...     ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE = 2
...
>>> Shape.SQUARE
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>
>>> Shape.ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>
>>> Shape(2)
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>

Note

Attempting to create a member with the same name as an already defined attribute (another member, a method, etc.) or attempting to create an attribute with the same name as a member is not allowed.

Ensuring unique enumeration values

By default, enumerations allow multiple names as aliases for the same value. When this behavior isn’t desired, you can use the unique() decorator:

>>> from enum import Enum, unique
>>> @unique
... class Mistake(Enum):
...     ONE = 1
...     TWO = 2
...     THREE = 3
...     FOUR = 3
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: duplicate values found in <enum 'Mistake'>: FOUR -> THREE

Using automatic values

If the exact value is unimportant you can use auto:

>>> from enum import Enum, auto
>>> class Color(Enum):
...     RED = auto()
...     BLUE = auto()
...     GREEN = auto()
...
>>> [member.value for member in Color]
[1, 2, 3]

The values are chosen by _generate_next_value_(), which can be overridden:

>>> class AutoName(Enum):
...     @staticmethod
...     def _generate_next_value_(name, start, count, last_values):
...         return name
...
>>> class Ordinal(AutoName):
...     NORTH = auto()
...     SOUTH = auto()
...     EAST = auto()
...     WEST = auto()
...
>>> [member.value for member in Ordinal]
['NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST', 'WEST']

Note

The _generate_next_value_() method must be defined before any members.

Iteration

Iterating over the members of an enum does not provide the aliases:

>>> list(Shape)
[<Shape.SQUARE: 2>, <Shape.DIAMOND: 1>, <Shape.CIRCLE: 3>]
>>> list(Weekday)
[<Weekday.MONDAY: 1>, <Weekday.TUESDAY: 2>, <Weekday.WEDNESDAY: 4>, <Weekday.THURSDAY: 8>, <Weekday.FRIDAY: 16>, <Weekday.SATURDAY: 32>, <Weekday.SUNDAY: 64>]

Note that the aliases Shape.ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE and Weekday.WEEKEND aren’t shown.

The special attribute __members__ is a read-only ordered mapping of names to members. It includes all names defined in the enumeration, including the aliases:

>>> for name, member in Shape.__members__.items():
...     name, member
...
('SQUARE', <Shape.SQUARE: 2>)
('DIAMOND', <Shape.DIAMOND: 1>)
('CIRCLE', <Shape.CIRCLE: 3>)
('ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE', <Shape.SQUARE: 2>)

The __members__ attribute can be used for detailed programmatic access to the enumeration members. For example, finding all the aliases:

>>> [name for name, member in Shape.__members__.items() if member.name != name]
['ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE']

Note

Aliases for flags include values with multiple flags set, such as 3, and no flags set, i.e. 0.

Comparisons

Enumeration members are compared by identity:

>>> Color.RED is Color.RED
True
>>> Color.RED is Color.BLUE
False
>>> Color.RED is not Color.BLUE
True

Ordered comparisons between enumeration values are not supported. Enum members are not integers (but see IntEnum below):

>>> Color.RED < Color.BLUE
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'Color' and 'Color'

Equality comparisons are defined though:

>>> Color.BLUE == Color.RED
False
>>> Color.BLUE != Color.RED
True
>>> Color.BLUE == Color.BLUE
True

Equality comparisons against non-enumeration values will always return False (again, IntEnum was explicitly designed to behave differently, see below):

>>> Color.BLUE == 2
False

Warning

It is possible to reload modules – if a reloaded module contains enums, they will be recreated, and the new members may not compare identical/equal to the original members.

Allowed members and attributes of enumerations

Most of the examples above use integers for enumeration values. Using integers is short and handy (and provided by default by the Functional API), but not strictly enforced. In the vast majority of use-cases, one doesn’t care what the actual value of an enumeration is. But if the value is important, enumerations can have arbitrary values.

Enumerations are Python classes, and can have methods and special methods as usual. If we have this enumeration:

>>> class Mood(Enum):
...     FUNKY = 1
...     HAPPY = 3
...
...     def describe(self):
...         # self is the member here
...         return self.name, self.value
...
...     def __str__(self):
...         return 'my custom str! {0}'.format(self.value)
...
...     @classmethod
...     def favorite_mood(cls):
...         # cls here is the enumeration
...         return cls.HAPPY
...

Then:

>>> Mood.favorite_mood()
<Mood.HAPPY: 3>
>>> Mood.HAPPY.describe()
('HAPPY', 3)
>>> str(Mood.FUNKY)
'my custom str! 1'

The rules for what is allowed are as follows: names that start and end with a single underscore are reserved by enum and cannot be used; all other attributes defined within an enumeration will become members of this enumeration, with the exception of special methods (__str__(), __add__(), etc.), descriptors (methods are also descriptors), and variable names listed in _ignore_.

Note: if your enumeration defines __new__() and/or __init__(), any value(s) given to the enum member will be passed into those methods. See Planet for an example.

Note

The __new__() method, if defined, is used during creation of the Enum members; it is then replaced by Enum’s __new__() which is used after class creation for lookup of existing members. See When to use __new__() vs. __init__() for more details.

Restricted Enum subclassing

A new Enum class must have one base enum class, up to one concrete data type, and as many object-based mixin classes as needed. The order of these base classes is:

class EnumName([mix-in, ...,] [data-type,] base-enum):
    pass

Also, subclassing an enumeration is allowed only if the enumeration does not define any members. So this is forbidden:

>>> class MoreColor(Color):
...     PINK = 17
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: <enum 'MoreColor'> cannot extend <enum 'Color'>

But this is allowed:

>>> class Foo(Enum):
...     def some_behavior(self):
...         pass
...
>>> class Bar(Foo):
...     HAPPY = 1
...     SAD = 2
...

Allowing subclassing of enums that define members would lead to a violation of some important invariants of types and instances. On the other hand, it makes sense to allow sharing some common behavior between a group of enumerations. (See OrderedEnum for an example.)

Dataclass support

When inheriting from a dataclass, the __repr__() omits the inherited class’ name. For example:

>>> from dataclasses import dataclass, field
>>> @dataclass
... class CreatureDataMixin:
...     size: str
...     legs: int
...     tail: bool = field(repr=False, default=True)
...
>>> class Creature(CreatureDataMixin, Enum):
...     BEETLE = 'small', 6
...     DOG = 'medium', 4
...
>>> Creature.DOG
<Creature.DOG: size='medium', legs=4>

Use the dataclass() argument repr=False to use the standard repr().

Changed in version 3.12: Only the dataclass fields are shown in the value area, not the dataclass’ name.

Note

Adding dataclass() decorator to Enum and its subclasses is not supported. It will not raise any errors, but it will produce very strange results at runtime, such as members being equal to each other:

>>> @dataclass               # don't do this: it does not make any sense
... class Color(Enum):
...    RED = 1
...    BLUE = 2
...
>>> Color.RED is Color.BLUE
False
>>> Color.RED == Color.BLUE  # problem is here: they should not be equal
True

Pickling

Enumerations can be pickled and unpickled:

>>> from test.test_enum import Fruit
>>> from pickle import dumps, loads
>>> Fruit.TOMATO is loads(dumps(Fruit.TOMATO))
True

The usual restrictions for pickling apply: picklable enums must be defined in the top level of a module, since unpickling requires them to be importable from that module.

Note

With pickle protocol version 4 it is possible to easily pickle enums nested in other classes.

It is possible to modify how enum members are pickled/unpickled by defining __reduce_ex__() in the enumeration class. The default method is by-value, but enums with complicated values may want to use by-name:

>>> import enum
>>> class MyEnum(enum.Enum):
...     __reduce_ex__ = enum.pickle_by_enum_name

Note

Using by-name for flags is not recommended, as unnamed aliases will not unpickle.

Functional API

The Enum class is callable, providing the following functional API:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG')
>>> Animal
<enum 'Animal'>
>>> Animal.ANT
<Animal.ANT: 1>
>>> list(Animal)
[<Animal.ANT: 1>, <Animal.BEE: 2>, <Animal.CAT: 3>, <Animal.DOG: 4>]

The semantics of this API resemble namedtuple. The first argument of the call to Enum is the name of the enumeration.

The second argument is the source of enumeration member names. It can be a whitespace-separated string of names, a sequence of names, a sequence of 2-tuples with key/value pairs, or a mapping (e.g. dictionary) of names to values. The last two options enable assigning arbitrary values to enumerations; the others auto-assign increasing integers starting with 1 (use the start parameter to specify a different starting value). A new class derived from Enum is returned. In other words, the above assignment to Animal is equivalent to:

>>> class Animal(Enum):
...     ANT = 1
...     BEE = 2
...     CAT = 3
...     DOG = 4
...

The reason for defaulting to 1 as the starting number and not 0 is that 0 is False in a boolean sense, but by default enum members all evaluate to True.

Pickling enums created with the functional API can be tricky as frame stack implementation details are used to try and figure out which module the enumeration is being created in (e.g. it will fail if you use a utility function in a separate module, and also may not work on IronPython or Jython). The solution is to specify the module name explicitly as follows:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG', module=__name__)

Warning

If module is not supplied, and Enum cannot determine what it is, the new Enum members will not be unpicklable; to keep errors closer to the source, pickling will be disabled.

The new pickle protocol 4 also, in some circumstances, relies on __qualname__ being set to the location where pickle will be able to find the class. For example, if the class was made available in class SomeData in the global scope:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG', qualname='SomeData.Animal')

The complete signature is:

Enum(
    value='NewEnumName',
    names=<...>,
    *,
    module='...',
    qualname='...',
    type=<mixed-in class>,
    start=1,
    )

• value: What the new enum class will record as its name.

• names: The enum members. This can be a whitespace- or comma-separated string (values will start at 1 unless otherwise specified):

  'RED GREEN BLUE' | 'RED,GREEN,BLUE' | 'RED, GREEN, BLUE'
  

  or an iterator of names:

  ['RED', 'GREEN', 'BLUE']
  

  or an iterator of (name, value) pairs: