Printing class attribute

Printing a class attribute from a function defined within the same class.

class person:
  name = "xyz"
  def show(self):
    print(self.name)

a = person
a.show()

Output:

TypeError: person.show() missing 1 required positional argument: 'self'

Why the above code is throwing error while the code below is working fine?

class person:
  def __init__(self, name):
    self.name = name

  def show(self):
    print(self.name)

a = person("xyz")
a.show()

Output: xyz

In the first case you are trying to access something that has not been set, which is the name of the particular instance of the class.

Το define that this is a class method you need to use the respective decorator.

@classmethod
def show(cls):
  print(cls.name)

You can name cls as you like btw, but it is common to use cls for class attributes and self for instance attributes/methods

If you do not need to this other ways to access the attribute would be

a.name
person.name