Overwriting attribute in super-class or sub-class — CodeQL query help documentation

ID: py/overwritten-inherited-attribute
Kind: problem
Security severity: 
Severity: warning
Precision: medium
Tags:
   - quality
   - reliability
   - correctness
Query suites:
   - python-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

Subclasses should not set attributes that are set in the superclass. Doing so may violate invariants in the superclass.

Recommendation¶

If you did not intend to override the attribute value set in the superclass, then rename the subclass attribute. If you do want to be able to set a new value for the attribute of the superclass, then convert the superclass attribute to a property. Otherwise the value should be passed as a parameter to the superclass __init__ method.

Example¶


#Attribute set in both superclass and subclass
class C(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.var = 0

class D(C):

    def __init__(self):
        self.var = 1 # self.var will be overwritten
        C.__init__(self)

class E(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.var = 0 # self.var will be overwritten

class F(E):

    def __init__(self):
        E.__init__(self)
        self.var = 1

#Fixed version -- Pass explicitly as a parameter
class G(object):

    def __init__(self, var = 0):
        self.var = var

class H(G):

    def __init__(self):
        G.__init__(self, 1)