137 – Read-only attributes

The standard way of creating read-only attributes in Python is by creating a “private” attribute and then exposing it through a property:

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

    @property
    def name(self):
        return self._name

This way, the property is read-only:

john = Person("John")

print(john.name)  # John
john.name = "Steve"  # AttributeError

However, the underlying “private” attribute is still accessible and could be modified:

john._name = "Steve"
print(john.name)  # Steve