Implementing and using callbacks in Python

By Vasudev Ram

Callbacks (or callback functions, as they are also called) are a useful and somewhat powerful programming technique. I first learned about the technique (in C) during a course on X-Windows , XLib and Motif, that I attended years ago.

Wikipedia article about callbacks.

( Also see this :)

In this post I'll show a simple way of implementing callbacks in Python. Due to Python's dynamic nature, it is quite easy to implement callbacks in it, more so than in some other languages, like C++ or Java. (But it's not difficult in those languages either.)

The program callback_demo.py (below) shows a simple way to implement and use callbacks, using just plain functions, i.e. no classes or anything more sophisticated are needed:

# File: callback_demo.py
# To demonstrate implementation and use of callbacks in Python, 
# using just plain functions.
# Author: Vasudev Ram
# Copyright 2017 Vasudev Ram
# Web site: https://vasudevram.github.io
# Blog: https://jugad2.blogspot.com
# Product store: https://gumroad.com/vasudevram

from __future__ import print_function
from time import sleep

def callback_a(i, result):
    print("Items processed: {}. Running result: {}.".format(i, result))

def square(i):
    return i * i

def processor(process, times, report_interval, callback):
    print("Entered processor(): times = {}, report_interval = {}, callback = {}".format(
    times, report_interval, callback.func_name))
    # Can also use callback.__name__ instead of callback.func_name in line above.
    result = 0
    print("Processing data ...")
    for i in range(1, times + 1):
        result += process(i)
        sleep(1)
        if i % report_interval == 0:
            # This is the call to the callback function 
            # that was passed to this function.
            callback(i, result)

processor(square, 20, 5, callback_a)

And here is the output when I run it:

$ python callback_demo.py
Entered processor(): times = 20, report_interval = 5, callback = callback_a
Processing data ...
Items processed: 5. Running result: 55.
Items processed: 10. Running result: 385.
Items processed: 15. Running result: 1240.
Items processed: 20. Running result: 2870.
$

The function callback_a (the last argument to the call to processor), gets substituted for the function parameter callback in the processor function definition. So callback_a gets called, and it reports the progress of the work being done. If we passed a different callback function instead of callback_a, we could get different behavior, e.g. progress report in a different format, or to a different destination, or something else, without changing the actual processor function. So this is a way of creating functions with low coupling, or putting it in other terms, creating functions (like processor) that have high cohesion.

Read up about coupling and cohesion.

Note that in the program, callback_demo.py, I've shown two ways of getting the name of a function, one being callback.func_name and the other being callback.__name__ (the latter in a comment). Both ways work. Also see this code snippet, which shows that if you define a function foo, it's func_name attribute is 'foo'; if you then assign foo to bar, bar's func_name attribute is still 'foo', not 'bar':

>>> def foo(): pass
...
>>> foo.__name__
'foo'
>>> bar = foo
>>>
>>> bar.__name__
'foo'
>>>
>>> foo.func_name
'foo'
>>> bar.func_name
'foo'

I'll talk a bit more about callbacks in my next post.

Enjoy.

---

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and consulting

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