Class & Static Methods; Functions

Value specs for class/static methods look like this:

val f : a:'a -> ?b:'b -> ... -> unit -> 'c

Rules

  • The final function argument (penultimate type expression) must be unit.
  • The return type can be any of the types mentioned earlier.
  • The remaining function arguments must either be named or optional. The types of these arguments can be any of the types mentioned earlier.

Examples

val add_item : fruit:string -> price:float -> unit -> unit
val subtract : x:int -> ?y:int -> unit -> int

Binding __init__

__init__ methods are called when constructing new Python objects. Here is an example.

Python:

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name, age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age

And the OCaml binding....

val __init__ : name:string -> age:int -> unit -> t

If you want to generate functions that ensure the class is correct, you can return t option or t Or_error.t instead.

Using a different name

You can use a more natural name for the __init__ function. E.g., something like create by using attributs.

val create : name:string -> age:int -> unit -> t
[@@py_fun_name __init__]

Functions

You can also bind functions that are not associated with a class.

The rules are the same for the class and static methods. To tell pyml_bindgen that you are actually binding module functions rather than class methods, you have to pass in a command line option --associated-with module.