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Python Object-Oriented Python Instant Objects Your first method

Posted by Jonathan Fanno
Jonathan Fanno
52 Points

AttributeError: 'Student' object has no attribute 'praise'

Why is it asking me for an attribute called praise, when the assignment was simply to create a method that would return a message? I entered this code into my own IDE, Pycharm and it works.

first_class.py 
class Student:
    name = "Jonathan"
    def Praise(self):
        return "You'll get there"
me = Student()
print(me.Praise())

1 Answer

Steven Tagawa
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Steven Tagawa
Python Development Techdegree Graduate 14,438 Points
Steven Tagawa
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Steven Tagawa
Python Development Techdegree Graduate 14,438 Points

To me this looks like a quirk of the challenge evaluator. The way I understand it, when you do a code challenge, what you write gets passed to an interpreter that isn't full-blooded Python, so sometimes little glitches happen. Your code is technically correct, which is why it works in PyCharm: me.Praise() runs the Praise method of your Student object, and then the print() prints the value the method returns. But it looks like the evaluator is trying to interpret the dot-notation as trying to access a Praise attribute in your Student class, and then throwing an error because it doesn't exist. (It totally shouldn't be doing this, especially because of the trailing parentheses, which no attribute call would have. If you'd written print(me.Praise) -- without the parentheses -- then it would be a call to print an attribute value.)

Probably the easiest way to "fix" it (again, not because it's wrong, but just to get something the evaluator will accept) is to break it into two steps: assign the return value of me.Praise() to a variable, and then print the variable.