Enum HOWTO

Release 3.13.2

Guido van Rossum and the Python development team

March 19, 2025

Python Software Foundation
Email: [email protected]

Contents

1 Programmatic access to enumeration members and their attributes 5

2 Duplicating enum members and values 5

3 Ensuring unique enumeration values 6

4 Using automatic values 6

5 Iteration 7

6 Comparisons 7

7 Allowed members and attributes of enumerations 8

8 Restricted Enum subclassing 9

9 Dataclass support 9

10 Pickling 10

11 Functional API 10

12 Derived Enumerations 12
12.1 IntEnum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
12.2 StrEnum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
12.3 IntFlag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
12.4 Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
12.5 Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

13 When to use __new__() vs. __init__() 16

13.1 Finer Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

14 How are Enums and Flags different? 20

14.1 Enum Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
14.2 Flag Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
14.3 Enum Members (aka instances) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
14.4 Flag Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

1
15 Enum Cookbook 21
15.1 Omitting values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
15.2 OrderedEnum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
15.3 DuplicateFreeEnum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
15.4 MultiValueEnum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
15.5 Planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
15.6 TimePeriod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

16 Subclassing EnumType 26

An Enum is a set of symbolic names bound to unique values. They are similar to global variables, but they offer a
more useful repr(), grouping, type-safety, and a few other features.
They are most useful when you have a variable that can take one of a limited selection of values. For example, the
days of the week:

>>> from enum import Enum

>>> class Weekday(Enum):
... MONDAY = 1
... TUESDAY = 2
... WEDNESDAY = 3
... THURSDAY = 4
... FRIDAY = 5
... SATURDAY = 6
... SUNDAY = 7

Or perhaps the RGB primary colors:

>>> from enum import Enum

>>> class Color(Enum):
... RED = 1
... GREEN = 2
... BLUE = 3

As you can see, creating an Enum is as simple as writing a class that inherits from Enum itself.

® Note

Case of Enum Members

Because Enums are used to represent constants, and to help avoid issues with name clashes between mixin-class
methods/attributes and enum names, we strongly recommend using UPPER_CASE names for members, and will
be using that style in our examples.

Depending on the nature of the enum a member’s value may or may not be important, but either way that value can
be used to get the corresponding member:

>>> Weekday(3)
<Weekday.WEDNESDAY: 3>

As you can see, the repr() of a member shows the enum name, the member name, and the value. The str() of a
member shows only the enum name and member name:

>>> print(Weekday.THURSDAY)
Weekday.THURSDAY

The type of an enumeration member is the enum it belongs to:

2
>>> type(Weekday.MONDAY)
<enum 'Weekday'>
>>> isinstance(Weekday.FRIDAY, Weekday)
True

Enum members have an attribute that contains just their name:

>>> print(Weekday.TUESDAY.name)
TUESDAY

Likewise, they have an attribute for their value:

>>> Weekday.WEDNESDAY.value
3

Unlike many languages that treat enumerations solely as name/value pairs, Python Enums can have behavior added.
For example, datetime.date has two methods for returning the weekday: weekday() and isoweekday(). The
difference is that one of them counts from 0-6 and the other from 1-7. Rather than keep track of that ourselves we
can add a method to the Weekday enum to extract the day from the date instance and return the matching enum
member:

@classmethod
def from_date(cls, date):
return cls(date.isoweekday())

The complete Weekday enum now looks like this:

>>> class Weekday(Enum):

... MONDAY = 1
... TUESDAY = 2
... WEDNESDAY = 3
... THURSDAY = 4
... FRIDAY = 5
... SATURDAY = 6
... SUNDAY = 7
... #
... @classmethod
... def from_date(cls, date):
... return cls(date.isoweekday())

Now we can find out what today is! Observe:

>>> from datetime import date

>>> Weekday.from_date(date.today())
<Weekday.TUESDAY: 2>

Of course, if you’re reading this on some other day, you’ll see that day instead.
This Weekday enum is great if our variable only needs one day, but what if we need several? Maybe we’re writing a
function to plot chores during a week, and don’t want to use a list – we could use a different type of Enum:

>>> from enum import Flag

>>> class Weekday(Flag):
... MONDAY = 1
... TUESDAY = 2
... WEDNESDAY = 4
... THURSDAY = 8
... FRIDAY = 16
(continues on next page)

3
 (continued from previous page)
... SATURDAY = 32
... SUNDAY = 64

We’ve changed two things: we’re inherited from Flag, and the values are all powers of 2.
Just like the original Weekday enum above, we can have a single selection:

>>> first_week_day = Weekday.MONDAY

>>> first_week_day
<Weekday.MONDAY: 1>

But Flag also allows us to combine several members into a single variable:

>>> weekend = Weekday.SATURDAY | Weekday.SUNDAY

>>> weekend
<Weekday.SATURDAY|SUNDAY: 96>

You can even iterate over a Flag variable:

>>> for day in weekend:

... print(day)
Weekday.SATURDAY
Weekday.SUNDAY

Okay, let’s get some chores set up:

>>> chores_for_ethan = {
... 'feed the cat': Weekday.MONDAY | Weekday.WEDNESDAY | Weekday.FRIDAY,
... 'do the dishes': Weekday.TUESDAY | Weekday.THURSDAY,
... 'answer SO questions': Weekday.SATURDAY,
... }

And a function to display the chores for a given day:

>>> def show_chores(chores, day):

... for chore, days in chores.items():
... if day in days:
... print(chore)
...
>>> show_chores(chores_for_ethan, Weekday.SATURDAY)
answer SO questions

In cases where the actual values of the members do not matter, you can save yourself some work and use auto()
for the values:

>>> from enum import auto

>>> class Weekday(Flag):
... MONDAY = auto()
... TUESDAY = auto()
... WEDNESDAY = auto()
... THURSDAY = auto()
... FRIDAY = auto()
... SATURDAY = auto()
... SUNDAY = auto()
... WEEKEND = SATURDAY | SUNDAY

4
1 Programmatic access to enumeration members and their at-
tributes
Sometimes it’s useful to access members in enumerations programmatically (i.e. situations where Color.RED won’t
do because the exact color is not known at program-writing time). Enum allows such access:

>>> Color(1)
<Color.RED: 1>
>>> Color(3)
<Color.BLUE: 3>

If you want to access enum members by name, use item access:

>>> Color['RED']
<Color.RED: 1>
>>> Color['GREEN']
<Color.GREEN: 2>

If you have an enum member and need its name or value:

>>> member = Color.RED

>>> member.name
'RED'
>>> member.value
1

2 Duplicating enum members and values

Having two enum members with the same name is invalid:

>>> class Shape(Enum):

... SQUARE = 2
... SQUARE = 3
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: 'SQUARE' already defined as 2

However, an enum member can have other names associated with it. Given two entries A and B with the same value
(and A defined first), B is an alias for the member A. By-value lookup of the value of A will return the member A.
By-name lookup of A will return the member A. By-name lookup of B will also return the member A:

>>> class Shape(Enum):

... SQUARE = 2
... DIAMOND = 1
... CIRCLE = 3
... ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE = 2
...
>>> Shape.SQUARE
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>
>>> Shape.ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>
>>> Shape(2)
<Shape.SQUARE: 2>

5
 ® Note

Attempting to create a member with the same name as an already defined attribute (another member, a method,
etc.) or attempting to create an attribute with the same name as a member is not allowed.

3 Ensuring unique enumeration values

By default, enumerations allow multiple names as aliases for the same value. When this behavior isn’t desired, you
can use the unique() decorator:

>>> from enum import Enum, unique

>>> @unique
... class Mistake(Enum):
... ONE = 1
... TWO = 2
... THREE = 3
... FOUR = 3
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: duplicate values found in <enum 'Mistake'>: FOUR -> THREE

4 Using automatic values

If the exact value is unimportant you can use auto:

>>> from enum import Enum, auto

>>> class Color(Enum):
... RED = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
...
>>> [member.value for member in Color]
[1, 2, 3]

The values are chosen by _generate_next_value_(), which can be overridden:

>>> class AutoName(Enum):

... @staticmethod
... def _generate_next_value_(name, start, count, last_values):
... return name
...
>>> class Ordinal(AutoName):
... NORTH = auto()
... SOUTH = auto()
... EAST = auto()
... WEST = auto()
...
>>> [member.value for member in Ordinal]
['NORTH', 'SOUTH', 'EAST', 'WEST']

® Note

The _generate_next_value_() method must be defined before any members.

6
5 Iteration
Iterating over the members of an enum does not provide the aliases:
>>> list(Shape)
[<Shape.SQUARE: 2>, <Shape.DIAMOND: 1>, <Shape.CIRCLE: 3>]
>>> list(Weekday)
[<Weekday.MONDAY: 1>, <Weekday.TUESDAY: 2>, <Weekday.WEDNESDAY: 4>, <Weekday.
,→THURSDAY: 8>, <Weekday.FRIDAY: 16>, <Weekday.SATURDAY: 32>, <Weekday.SUNDAY: 64>]

Note that the aliases Shape.ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE and Weekday.WEEKEND aren’t shown.

The special attribute __members__ is a read-only ordered mapping of names to members. It includes all names
defined in the enumeration, including the aliases:

>>> for name, member in Shape.__members__.items():

... name, member
...
('SQUARE', <Shape.SQUARE: 2>)
('DIAMOND', <Shape.DIAMOND: 1>)
('CIRCLE', <Shape.CIRCLE: 3>)
('ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE', <Shape.SQUARE: 2>)

The __members__ attribute can be used for detailed programmatic access to the enumeration members. For exam-
ple, finding all the aliases:

>>> [name for name, member in Shape.__members__.items() if member.name != name]

['ALIAS_FOR_SQUARE']

® Note

Aliases for flags include values with multiple flags set, such as 3, and no flags set, i.e. 0.

6 Comparisons
Enumeration members are compared by identity:
>>> Color.RED is Color.RED
True
>>> Color.RED is Color.BLUE
False
>>> Color.RED is not Color.BLUE
True

Ordered comparisons between enumeration values are not supported. Enum members are not integers (but see
IntEnum below):

>>> Color.RED < Color.BLUE

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'Color' and 'Color'

Equality comparisons are defined though:

>>> Color.BLUE == Color.RED
False
>>> Color.BLUE != Color.RED
(continues on next page)

7
 (continued from previous page)
True
>>> Color.BLUE == Color.BLUE
True

Comparisons against non-enumeration values will always compare not equal (again, IntEnum was explicitly designed
to behave differently, see below):

>>> Color.BLUE == 2
False

Á Warning

It is possible to reload modules – if a reloaded module contains enums, they will be recreated, and the new
members may not compare identical/equal to the original members.

7 Allowed members and attributes of enumerations

Most of the examples above use integers for enumeration values. Using integers is short and handy (and provided by
default by the Functional API), but not strictly enforced. In the vast majority of use-cases, one doesn’t care what the
actual value of an enumeration is. But if the value is important, enumerations can have arbitrary values.
Enumerations are Python classes, and can have methods and special methods as usual. If we have this enumeration:

>>> class Mood(Enum):

... FUNKY = 1
... HAPPY = 3
...
... def describe(self):
... # self is the member here
... return self.name, self.value
...
... def __str__(self):
... return 'my custom str! {0}'.format(self.value)
...
... @classmethod
... def favorite_mood(cls):
... # cls here is the enumeration
... return cls.HAPPY
...

Then:

>>> Mood.favorite_mood()
<Mood.HAPPY: 3>
>>> Mood.HAPPY.describe()
('HAPPY', 3)
>>> str(Mood.FUNKY)
'my custom str! 1'

The rules for what is allowed are as follows: names that start and end with a single underscore are reserved by enum
and cannot be used; all other attributes defined within an enumeration will become members of this enumeration,
with the exception of special methods (__str__(), __add__(), etc.), descriptors (methods are also descriptors),
and variable names listed in _ignore_.
Note: if your enumeration defines __new__() and/or __init__(), any value(s) given to the enum member will
be passed into those methods. See Planet for an example.

8
 ® Note

The __new__() method, if defined, is used during creation of the Enum members; it is then replaced by Enum’s
__new__() which is used after class creation for lookup of existing members. See When to use __new__() vs.
__init__() for more details.

8 Restricted Enum subclassing

A new Enum class must have one base enum class, up to one concrete data type, and as many object-based mixin
classes as needed. The order of these base classes is:

class EnumName([mix-in, ...,] [data-type,] base-enum):

pass

Also, subclassing an enumeration is allowed only if the enumeration does not define any members. So this is forbidden:

>>> class MoreColor(Color):

... PINK = 17
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: <enum 'MoreColor'> cannot extend <enum 'Color'>

But this is allowed:

>>> class Foo(Enum):

... def some_behavior(self):
... pass
...
>>> class Bar(Foo):
... HAPPY = 1
... SAD = 2
...

Allowing subclassing of enums that define members would lead to a violation of some important invariants of types
and instances. On the other hand, it makes sense to allow sharing some common behavior between a group of
enumerations. (See OrderedEnum for an example.)

9 Dataclass support
When inheriting from a dataclass, the __repr__() omits the inherited class’ name. For example:

>>> from dataclasses import dataclass, field

>>> @dataclass
... class CreatureDataMixin:
... size: str
... legs: int
... tail: bool = field(repr=False, default=True)
...
>>> class Creature(CreatureDataMixin, Enum):
... BEETLE = 'small', 6
... DOG = 'medium', 4
...
>>> Creature.DOG
<Creature.DOG: size='medium', legs=4>

9
Use the dataclass() argument repr=False to use the standard repr().
Changed in version 3.12: Only the dataclass fields are shown in the value area, not the dataclass’ name.

® Note

Adding dataclass() decorator to Enum and its subclasses is not supported. It will not raise any errors, but it
will produce very strange results at runtime, such as members being equal to each other:
>>> @dataclass # don't do this: it does not make any sense
... class Color(Enum):
... RED = 1
... BLUE = 2
...
>>> Color.RED is Color.BLUE
False
>>> Color.RED == Color.BLUE # problem is here: they should not be equal
True

10 Pickling
Enumerations can be pickled and unpickled:

>>> from test.test_enum import Fruit

>>> from pickle import dumps, loads
>>> Fruit.TOMATO is loads(dumps(Fruit.TOMATO))
True

The usual restrictions for pickling apply: picklable enums must be defined in the top level of a module, since unpick-
ling requires them to be importable from that module.

® Note

With pickle protocol version 4 it is possible to easily pickle enums nested in other classes.

It is possible to modify how enum members are pickled/unpickled by defining __reduce_ex__() in the enumera-
tion class. The default method is by-value, but enums with complicated values may want to use by-name:

>>> import enum

>>> class MyEnum(enum.Enum):
... __reduce_ex__ = enum.pickle_by_enum_name

® Note

Using by-name for flags is not recommended, as unnamed aliases will not unpickle.

11 Functional API
The Enum class is callable, providing the following functional API:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG')

>>> Animal
<enum 'Animal'>
(continues on next page)

10
 (continued from previous page)
>>> Animal.ANT
<Animal.ANT: 1>
>>> list(Animal)
[<Animal.ANT: 1>, <Animal.BEE: 2>, <Animal.CAT: 3>, <Animal.DOG: 4>]

The semantics of this API resemble namedtuple. The first argument of the call to Enum is the name of the enu-
meration.
The second argument is the source of enumeration member names. It can be a whitespace-separated string of names,
a sequence of names, a sequence of 2-tuples with key/value pairs, or a mapping (e.g. dictionary) of names to values.
The last two options enable assigning arbitrary values to enumerations; the others auto-assign increasing integers
starting with 1 (use the start parameter to specify a different starting value). A new class derived from Enum is
returned. In other words, the above assignment to Animal is equivalent to:

>>> class Animal(Enum):

... ANT = 1
... BEE = 2
... CAT = 3
... DOG = 4
...

The reason for defaulting to 1 as the starting number and not 0 is that 0 is False in a boolean sense, but by default
enum members all evaluate to True.
Pickling enums created with the functional API can be tricky as frame stack implementation details are used to try
and figure out which module the enumeration is being created in (e.g. it will fail if you use a utility function in
a separate module, and also may not work on IronPython or Jython). The solution is to specify the module name
explicitly as follows:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG', module=__name__)

Á Warning

If module is not supplied, and Enum cannot determine what it is, the new Enum members will not be unpicklable;
to keep errors closer to the source, pickling will be disabled.

The new pickle protocol 4 also, in some circumstances, relies on __qualname__ being set to the location where
pickle will be able to find the class. For example, if the class was made available in class SomeData in the global
scope:

>>> Animal = Enum('Animal', 'ANT BEE CAT DOG', qualname='SomeData.Animal')

The complete signature is:

Enum(
value='NewEnumName',
names=<...>,
*,
module='...',
qualname='...',
type=<mixed-in class>,
start=1,
)

• value: What the new enum class will record as its name.
• names: The enum members. This can be a whitespace- or comma-separated string (values will start at 1 unless
otherwise specified):

11
 'RED GREEN BLUE' | 'RED,GREEN,BLUE' | 'RED, GREEN, BLUE'

or an iterator of names:

['RED', 'GREEN', 'BLUE']

or an iterator of (name, value) pairs:

[('CYAN', 4), ('MAGENTA', 5), ('YELLOW', 6)]

or a mapping:

{'CHARTREUSE': 7, 'SEA_GREEN': 11, 'ROSEMARY': 42}

• module: name of module where new enum class can be found.

• qualname: where in module new enum class can be found.
• type: type to mix in to new enum class.
• start: number to start counting at if only names are passed in.
Changed in version 3.5: The start parameter was added.

12 Derived Enumerations
12.1 IntEnum
The first variation of Enum that is provided is also a subclass of int. Members of an IntEnum can be compared to
integers; by extension, integer enumerations of different types can also be compared to each other:

>>> from enum import IntEnum

>>> class Shape(IntEnum):
... CIRCLE = 1
... SQUARE = 2
...
>>> class Request(IntEnum):
... POST = 1
... GET = 2
...
>>> Shape == 1
False
>>> Shape.CIRCLE == 1
True
>>> Shape.CIRCLE == Request.POST
True

However, they still can’t be compared to standard Enum enumerations:

>>> class Shape(IntEnum):

... CIRCLE = 1
... SQUARE = 2
...
>>> class Color(Enum):
... RED = 1
... GREEN = 2
...
>>> Shape.CIRCLE == Color.RED
False

12
IntEnum values behave like integers in other ways you’d expect:

>>> int(Shape.CIRCLE)
1
>>> ['a', 'b', 'c'][Shape.CIRCLE]
'b'
>>> [i for i in range(Shape.SQUARE)]
[0, 1]

12.2 StrEnum
The second variation of Enum that is provided is also a subclass of str. Members of a StrEnum can be compared
to strings; by extension, string enumerations of different types can also be compared to each other.
Added in version 3.11.

12.3 IntFlag
The next variation of Enum provided, IntFlag, is also based on int. The difference being IntFlag members can
be combined using the bitwise operators (&, |, ^, ~) and the result is still an IntFlag member, if possible. Like
IntEnum, IntFlag members are also integers and can be used wherever an int is used.

® Note

Any operation on an IntFlag member besides the bit-wise operations will lose the IntFlag membership.
Bit-wise operations that result in invalid IntFlag values will lose the IntFlag membership. See
FlagBoundary for details.

Added in version 3.6.

Changed in version 3.11.
Sample IntFlag class:
>>> from enum import IntFlag
>>> class Perm(IntFlag):
... R = 4
... W = 2
... X = 1
...
>>> Perm.R | Perm.W
<Perm.R|W: 6>
>>> Perm.R + Perm.W
6
>>> RW = Perm.R | Perm.W
>>> Perm.R in RW
True

It is also possible to name the combinations:

>>> class Perm(IntFlag):
... R = 4
... W = 2
... X = 1
... RWX = 7
...
>>> Perm.RWX
<Perm.RWX: 7>
(continues on next page)

13
 (continued from previous page)
>>> ~Perm.RWX
<Perm: 0>
>>> Perm(7)
<Perm.RWX: 7>

® Note

Named combinations are considered aliases. Aliases do not show up during iteration, but can be returned from
by-value lookups.

Changed in version 3.11.

Another important difference between IntFlag and Enum is that if no flags are set (the value is 0), its boolean
evaluation is False:

>>> Perm.R & Perm.X

<Perm: 0>
>>> bool(Perm.R & Perm.X)
False

Because IntFlag members are also subclasses of int they can be combined with them (but may lose IntFlag
membership:
>>> Perm.X | 4
<Perm.R|X: 5>

>>> Perm.X + 8
9

® Note

The negation operator, ~, always returns an IntFlag member with a positive value:
>>> (~Perm.X).value == (Perm.R|Perm.W).value == 6
True

IntFlag members can also be iterated over:

>>> list(RW)
[<Perm.R: 4>, <Perm.W: 2>]

Added in version 3.11.

12.4 Flag
The last variation is Flag. Like IntFlag, Flag members can be combined using the bitwise operators (&, |, ^,
~). Unlike IntFlag, they cannot be combined with, nor compared against, any other Flag enumeration, nor int.
While it is possible to specify the values directly it is recommended to use auto as the value and let Flag select an
appropriate value.
Added in version 3.6.
Like IntFlag, if a combination of Flag members results in no flags being set, the boolean evaluation is False:
>>> from enum import Flag, auto
>>> class Color(Flag):
(continues on next page)

14
 (continued from previous page)
... RED = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
...
>>> Color.RED & Color.GREEN
<Color: 0>
>>> bool(Color.RED & Color.GREEN)
False

Individual flags should have values that are powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, …), while combinations of flags will not:

>>> class Color(Flag):

... RED = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
... WHITE = RED | BLUE | GREEN
...
>>> Color.WHITE
<Color.WHITE: 7>

Giving a name to the “no flags set” condition does not change its boolean value:

>>> class Color(Flag):

... BLACK = 0
... RED = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
...
>>> Color.BLACK
<Color.BLACK: 0>
>>> bool(Color.BLACK)
False

Flag members can also be iterated over:

>>> purple = Color.RED | Color.BLUE

>>> list(purple)
[<Color.RED: 1>, <Color.BLUE: 2>]

Added in version 3.11.

® Note

For the majority of new code, Enum and Flag are strongly recommended, since IntEnum and IntFlag break
some semantic promises of an enumeration (by being comparable to integers, and thus by transitivity to other
unrelated enumerations). IntEnum and IntFlag should be used only in cases where Enum and Flag will not do;
for example, when integer constants are replaced with enumerations, or for interoperability with other systems.

12.5 Others
While IntEnum is part of the enum module, it would be very simple to implement independently:

class IntEnum(int, ReprEnum): # or Enum instead of ReprEnum

pass

This demonstrates how similar derived enumerations can be defined; for example a FloatEnum that mixes in float
instead of int.

15
Some rules:
1. When subclassing Enum, mix-in types must appear before the Enum class itself in the sequence of bases, as in
the IntEnum example above.
2. Mix-in types must be subclassable. For example, bool and range are not subclassable and will throw an error
during Enum creation if used as the mix-in type.
3. While Enum can have members of any type, once you mix in an additional type, all the members must have
values of that type, e.g. int above. This restriction does not apply to mix-ins which only add methods and
don’t specify another type.
4. When another data type is mixed in, the value attribute is not the same as the enum member itself, although
it is equivalent and will compare equal.
5. A data type is a mixin that defines __new__(), or a dataclass
6. %-style formatting: %s and %r call the Enum class’s __str__() and __repr__() respectively; other codes
(such as %i or %h for IntEnum) treat the enum member as its mixed-in type.
7. Formatted string literals, str.format(), and format() will use the enum’s __str__() method.

® Note

Because IntEnum, IntFlag, and StrEnum are designed to be drop-in replacements for existing constants, their
__str__() method has been reset to their data types’ __str__() method.

13 When to use __new__() vs. __init__()

__new__() must be used whenever you want to customize the actual value of the Enum member. Any other modi-
fications may go in either __new__() or __init__(), with __init__() being preferred.
For example, if you want to pass several items to the constructor, but only want one of them to be the value:

>>> class Coordinate(bytes, Enum):

... """
... Coordinate with binary codes that can be indexed by the int code.
... """
... def __new__(cls, value, label, unit):
... obj = bytes.__new__(cls, [value])
... obj._value_ = value
... obj.label = label
... obj.unit = unit
... return obj
... PX = (0, 'P.X', 'km')
... PY = (1, 'P.Y', 'km')
... VX = (2, 'V.X', 'km/s')
... VY = (3, 'V.Y', 'km/s')
...

>>> print(Coordinate['PY'])
Coordinate.PY

>>> print(Coordinate(3))
Coordinate.VY

Á Warning

16
 Do not call super().__new__(), as the lookup-only __new__ is the one that is found; instead, use the data
type directly.

13.1 Finer Points

Supported __dunder__ names
__members__ is a read-only ordered mapping of member_name:member items. It is only available on the class.

__new__(), if specified, must create and return the enum members; it is also a very good idea to set the member’s
_value_ appropriately. Once all the members are created it is no longer used.

Supported _sunder_ names

• _name_ – name of the member
• _value_ – value of the member; can be set in __new__
• _missing_() – a lookup function used when a value is not found; may be overridden
• _ignore_ – a list of names, either as a list or a str, that will not be transformed into members, and will
be removed from the final class
• _generate_next_value_() – used to get an appropriate value for an enum member; may be overridden
• _add_alias_() – adds a new name as an alias to an existing member.
• _add_value_alias_() – adds a new value as an alias to an existing member. See MultiValueEnum for an
example.

® Note

For standard Enum classes the next value chosen is the highest value seen incremented by one.
For Flag classes the next value chosen will be the next highest power-of-two.

Changed in version 3.13: Prior versions would use the last seen value instead of the highest value.
Added in version 3.6: _missing_, _order_, _generate_next_value_
Added in version 3.7: _ignore_
Added in version 3.13: _add_alias_, _add_value_alias_
To help keep Python 2 / Python 3 code in sync an _order_ attribute can be provided. It will be checked against the
actual order of the enumeration and raise an error if the two do not match:

>>> class Color(Enum):

... _order_ = 'RED GREEN BLUE'
... RED = 1
... BLUE = 3
... GREEN = 2
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
TypeError: member order does not match _order_:
['RED', 'BLUE', 'GREEN']
['RED', 'GREEN', 'BLUE']

17
 ® Note

In Python 2 code the _order_ attribute is necessary as definition order is lost before it can be recorded.

_Private__names
Private names are not converted to enum members, but remain normal attributes.
Changed in version 3.11.

Enum member type

Enum members are instances of their enum class, and are normally accessed as EnumClass.member. In certain
situations, such as writing custom enum behavior, being able to access one member directly from another is useful,
and is supported; however, in order to avoid name clashes between member names and attributes/methods from
mixed-in classes, upper-case names are strongly recommended.
Changed in version 3.5.

Creating members that are mixed with other data types

When subclassing other data types, such as int or str, with an Enum, all values after the = are passed to that data
type’s constructor. For example:

>>> class MyEnum(IntEnum): # help(int) -> int(x, base=10) -> integer

... example = '11', 16 # so x='11' and base=16
...
>>> MyEnum.example.value # and hex(11) is...
17

Boolean value of Enum classes and members

Enum classes that are mixed with non-Enum types (such as int, str, etc.) are evaluated according to the mixed-in
type’s rules; otherwise, all members evaluate as True. To make your own enum’s boolean evaluation depend on the
member’s value add the following to your class:

def __bool__(self):
return bool(self.value)

Plain Enum classes always evaluate as True.

Enum classes with methods

If you give your enum subclass extra methods, like the Planet class below, those methods will show up in a dir()
of the member, but not of the class:

>>> dir(Planet)
['EARTH', 'JUPITER', 'MARS', 'MERCURY', 'NEPTUNE', 'SATURN', 'URANUS', 'VENUS', '__
,→class__', '__doc__', '__members__', '__module__']

>>> dir(Planet.EARTH)
['__class__', '__doc__', '__module__', 'mass', 'name', 'radius', 'surface_gravity',
,→ 'value']

Combining members of Flag

Iterating over a combination of Flag members will only return the members that are comprised of a single bit:

18
>>> class Color(Flag):
... RED = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... MAGENTA = RED | BLUE
... YELLOW = RED | GREEN
... CYAN = GREEN | BLUE
...
>>> Color(3) # named combination
<Color.YELLOW: 3>
>>> Color(7) # not named combination
<Color.RED|GREEN|BLUE: 7>

Flag and IntFlag minutia

Using the following snippet for our examples:

>>> class Color(IntFlag):

... BLACK = 0
... RED = 1
... GREEN = 2
... BLUE = 4
... PURPLE = RED | BLUE
... WHITE = RED | GREEN | BLUE
...

the following are true:

• single-bit flags are canonical
• multi-bit and zero-bit flags are aliases
• only canonical flags are returned during iteration:

>>> list(Color.WHITE)
[<Color.RED: 1>, <Color.GREEN: 2>, <Color.BLUE: 4>]

• negating a flag or flag set returns a new flag/flag set with the corresponding positive integer value:

>>> Color.BLUE
<Color.BLUE: 4>

>>> ~Color.BLUE
<Color.RED|GREEN: 3>

• names of pseudo-flags are constructed from their members’ names:

>>> (Color.RED | Color.GREEN).name

'RED|GREEN'

>>> class Perm(IntFlag):

... R = 4
... W = 2
... X = 1
...
>>> (Perm.R & Perm.W).name is None # effectively Perm(0)
True

• multi-bit flags, aka aliases, can be returned from operations:

19
 >>> Color.RED | Color.BLUE
<Color.PURPLE: 5>

>>> Color(7) # or Color(-1)

<Color.WHITE: 7>

>>> Color(0)
<Color.BLACK: 0>

• membership / containment checking: zero-valued flags are always considered to be contained:

>>> Color.BLACK in Color.WHITE

True

otherwise, only if all bits of one flag are in the other flag will True be returned:

>>> Color.PURPLE in Color.WHITE

True

>>> Color.GREEN in Color.PURPLE

False

There is a new boundary mechanism that controls how out-of-range / invalid bits are handled: STRICT, CONFORM,
EJECT, and KEEP:
• STRICT –> raises an exception when presented with invalid values
• CONFORM –> discards any invalid bits
• EJECT –> lose Flag status and become a normal int with the given value
• KEEP –> keep the extra bits
– keeps Flag status and extra bits
– extra bits do not show up in iteration
– extra bits do show up in repr() and str()
The default for Flag is STRICT, the default for IntFlag is EJECT, and the default for _convert_ is KEEP (see
ssl.Options for an example of when KEEP is needed).

14 How are Enums and Flags different?

Enums have a custom metaclass that affects many aspects of both derived Enum classes and their instances (members).

14.1 Enum Classes

The EnumType metaclass is responsible for providing the __contains__(), __dir__(), __iter__() and other
methods that allow one to do things with an Enum class that fail on a typical class, such as list(Color) or
some_enum_var in Color. EnumType is responsible for ensuring that various other methods on the final Enum
class are correct (such as __new__(), __getnewargs__(), __str__() and __repr__()).

14.2 Flag Classes

Flags have an expanded view of aliasing: to be canonical, the value of a flag needs to be a power-of-two value, and
not a duplicate name. So, in addition to the Enum definition of alias, a flag with no value (a.k.a. 0) or with more than
one power-of-two value (e.g. 3) is considered an alias.

20
14.3 Enum Members (aka instances)
The most interesting thing about enum members is that they are singletons. EnumType creates them all while it
is creating the enum class itself, and then puts a custom __new__() in place to ensure that no new ones are ever
instantiated by returning only the existing member instances.

14.4 Flag Members

Flag members can be iterated over just like the Flag class, and only the canonical members will be returned. For
example:

>>> list(Color)
[<Color.RED: 1>, <Color.GREEN: 2>, <Color.BLUE: 4>]

(Note that BLACK, PURPLE, and WHITE do not show up.)

Inverting a flag member returns the corresponding positive value, rather than a negative value — for example:

>>> ~Color.RED
<Color.GREEN|BLUE: 6>

Flag members have a length corresponding to the number of power-of-two values they contain. For example:

>>> len(Color.PURPLE)
2

15 Enum Cookbook
While Enum, IntEnum, StrEnum, Flag, and IntFlag are expected to cover the majority of use-cases, they cannot
cover them all. Here are recipes for some different types of enumerations that can be used directly, or as examples
for creating one’s own.

15.1 Omitting values

In many use-cases, one doesn’t care what the actual value of an enumeration is. There are several ways to define this
type of simple enumeration:
• use instances of auto for the value
• use instances of object as the value
• use a descriptive string as the value
• use a tuple as the value and a custom __new__() to replace the tuple with an int value
Using any of these methods signifies to the user that these values are not important, and also enables one to add,
remove, or reorder members without having to renumber the remaining members.

Using auto
Using auto would look like:

>>> class Color(Enum):

... RED = auto()
... BLUE = auto()
... GREEN = auto()
...
>>> Color.GREEN
<Color.GREEN: 3>

21
Using object
Using object would look like:

>>> class Color(Enum):

... RED = object()
... GREEN = object()
... BLUE = object()
...
>>> Color.GREEN
<Color.GREEN: <object object at 0x...>>

This is also a good example of why you might want to write your own __repr__():

>>> class Color(Enum):

... RED = object()
... GREEN = object()
... BLUE = object()
... def __repr__(self):
... return "<%s.%s>" % (self.__class__.__name__, self._name_)
...
>>> Color.GREEN
<Color.GREEN>

Using a descriptive string

Using a string as the value would look like:

>>> class Color(Enum):

... RED = 'stop'
... GREEN = 'go'
... BLUE = 'too fast!'
...
>>> Color.GREEN
<Color.GREEN: 'go'>

Using a custom __new__()

Using an auto-numbering __new__() would look like:

>>> class AutoNumber(Enum):

... def __new__(cls):
... value = len(cls.__members__) + 1
... obj = object.__new__(cls)
... obj._value_ = value
... return obj
...
>>> class Color(AutoNumber):
... RED = ()
... GREEN = ()
... BLUE = ()
...
>>> Color.GREEN
<Color.GREEN: 2>

To make a more general purpose AutoNumber, add *args to the signature:

22
>>> class AutoNumber(Enum):
... def __new__(cls, *args): # this is the only change from above
... value = len(cls.__members__) + 1
... obj = object.__new__(cls)
... obj._value_ = value
... return obj
...

Then when you inherit from AutoNumber you can write your own __init__ to handle any extra arguments:

>>> class Swatch(AutoNumber):

... def __init__(self, pantone='unknown'):
... self.pantone = pantone
... AUBURN = '3497'
... SEA_GREEN = '1246'
... BLEACHED_CORAL = () # New color, no Pantone code yet!
...
>>> Swatch.SEA_GREEN
<Swatch.SEA_GREEN: 2>
>>> Swatch.SEA_GREEN.pantone
'1246'
>>> Swatch.BLEACHED_CORAL.pantone
'unknown'

® Note

The __new__() method, if defined, is used during creation of the Enum members; it is then replaced by Enum’s
__new__() which is used after class creation for lookup of existing members.

Á Warning

Do not call super().__new__(), as the lookup-only __new__ is the one that is found; instead, use the data
type directly – e.g.:
obj = int.__new__(cls, value)

15.2 OrderedEnum
An ordered enumeration that is not based on IntEnum and so maintains the normal Enum invariants (such as not
being comparable to other enumerations):

>>> class OrderedEnum(Enum):

... def __ge__(self, other):
... if self.__class__ is other.__class__:
... return self.value >= other.value
... return NotImplemented
... def __gt__(self, other):
... if self.__class__ is other.__class__:
... return self.value > other.value
... return NotImplemented
... def __le__(self, other):
... if self.__class__ is other.__class__:
... return self.value <= other.value
... return NotImplemented
(continues on next page)

23
 (continued from previous page)
... def __lt__(self, other):
... if self.__class__ is other.__class__:
... return self.value < other.value
... return NotImplemented
...
>>> class Grade(OrderedEnum):
... A = 5
... B = 4
... C = 3
... D = 2
... F = 1
...
>>> Grade.C < Grade.A
True

15.3 DuplicateFreeEnum
Raises an error if a duplicate member value is found instead of creating an alias:
>>> class DuplicateFreeEnum(Enum):
... def __init__(self, *args):
... cls = self.__class__
... if any(self.value == e.value for e in cls):
... a = self.name
... e = cls(self.value).name
... raise ValueError(
... "aliases not allowed in DuplicateFreeEnum: %r --> %r"
... % (a, e))
...
>>> class Color(DuplicateFreeEnum):
... RED = 1
... GREEN = 2
... BLUE = 3
... GRENE = 2
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: aliases not allowed in DuplicateFreeEnum: 'GRENE' --> 'GREEN'

® Note

This is a useful example for subclassing Enum to add or change other behaviors as well as disallowing aliases. If
the only desired change is disallowing aliases, the unique() decorator can be used instead.

15.4 MultiValueEnum
Supports having more than one value per member:
>>> class MultiValueEnum(Enum):
... def __new__(cls, value, *values):
... self = object.__new__(cls)
... self._value_ = value
... for v in values:
... self._add_value_alias_(v)
... return self
(continues on next page)

24
 (continued from previous page)
...
>>> class DType(MultiValueEnum):
... float32 = 'f', 8
... double64 = 'd', 9
...
>>> DType('f')
<DType.float32: 'f'>
>>> DType(9)
<DType.double64: 'd'>

15.5 Planet
If __new__() or __init__() is defined, the value of the enum member will be passed to those methods:

>>> class Planet(Enum):

... MERCURY = (3.303e+23, 2.4397e6)
... VENUS = (4.869e+24, 6.0518e6)
... EARTH = (5.976e+24, 6.37814e6)
... MARS = (6.421e+23, 3.3972e6)
... JUPITER = (1.9e+27, 7.1492e7)
... SATURN = (5.688e+26, 6.0268e7)
... URANUS = (8.686e+25, 2.5559e7)
... NEPTUNE = (1.024e+26, 2.4746e7)
... def __init__(self, mass, radius):
... self.mass = mass # in kilograms
... self.radius = radius # in meters
... @property
... def surface_gravity(self):
... # universal gravitational constant (m3 kg-1 s-2)
... G = 6.67300E-11
... return G * self.mass / (self.radius * self.radius)
...
>>> Planet.EARTH.value
(5.976e+24, 6378140.0)
>>> Planet.EARTH.surface_gravity
9.802652743337129

15.6 TimePeriod
An example to show the _ignore_ attribute in use:

>>> from datetime import timedelta

>>> class Period(timedelta, Enum):
... "different lengths of time"
... _ignore_ = 'Period i'
... Period = vars()
... for i in range(367):
... Period['day_%d' % i] = i
...
>>> list(Period)[:2]
[<Period.day_0: datetime.timedelta(0)>, <Period.day_1: datetime.timedelta(days=1)>]
>>> list(Period)[-2:]
[<Period.day_365: datetime.timedelta(days=365)>, <Period.day_366: datetime.
,→timedelta(days=366)>]

25
16 Subclassing EnumType
While most enum needs can be met by customizing Enum subclasses, either with class decorators or custom functions,
EnumType can be subclassed to provide a different Enum experience.

26