Is it an acceptable pattern to define a Class inside a Function?

Question

There's an example of creating a radar chart in the documentation for Matplotlib, and I'm trying to understand the design. http://matplotlib.org/examples/api/radar_chart.html

"""
Example of creating a radar chart (a.k.a. a spider or star chart) [1]_.

Although this example allows a frame of either 'circle' or 'polygon', polygon
frames don't have proper gridlines (the lines are circles instead of polygons).
It's possible to get a polygon grid by setting GRIDLINE_INTERPOLATION_STEPS in
matplotlib.axis to the desired number of vertices, but the orientation of the
polygon is not aligned with the radial axes.

.. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart
"""
import numpy as np

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.path import Path
from matplotlib.spines import Spine
from matplotlib.projections.polar import PolarAxes
from matplotlib.projections import register_projection


def radar_factory(num_vars, frame='circle'):
    """Create a radar chart with `num_vars` axes.

    This function creates a RadarAxes projection and registers it.

    Parameters
    ----------
    num_vars : int
        Number of variables for radar chart.
    frame : {'circle' | 'polygon'}
        Shape of frame surrounding axes.

    """
    # calculate evenly-spaced axis angles
    theta = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, num_vars, endpoint=False)
    # rotate theta such that the first axis is at the top
    theta += np.pi/2

    def draw_poly_patch(self):
        verts = unit_poly_verts(theta)
        return plt.Polygon(verts, closed=True, edgecolor='k')

    def draw_circle_patch(self):
        # unit circle centered on (0.5, 0.5)
        return plt.Circle((0.5, 0.5), 0.5)

    patch_dict = {'polygon': draw_poly_patch, 'circle': draw_circle_patch}
    if frame not in patch_dict:
        raise ValueError('unknown value for `frame`: %s' % frame)

    class RadarAxes(PolarAxes):

        name = 'radar'
        # use 1 line segment to connect specified points
        RESOLUTION = 1
        # define draw_frame method
        draw_patch = patch_dict[frame]

        def fill(self, *args, **kwargs):
            """Override fill so that line is closed by default"""
            closed = kwargs.pop('closed', True)
            return super(RadarAxes, self).fill(closed=closed, *args, **kwargs)

        def plot(self, *args, **kwargs):
            """Override plot so that line is closed by default"""
            lines = super(RadarAxes, self).plot(*args, **kwargs)
            for line in lines:
                self._close_line(line)

        def _close_line(self, line):
            x, y = line.get_data()
            # FIXME: markers at x[0], y[0] get doubled-up
            if x[0] != x[-1]:
                x = np.concatenate((x, [x[0]]))
                y = np.concatenate((y, [y[0]]))
                line.set_data(x, y)

        def set_varlabels(self, labels):
            self.set_thetagrids(np.degrees(theta), labels)

        def _gen_axes_patch(self):
            return self.draw_patch()

        def _gen_axes_spines(self):
            if frame == 'circle':
                return PolarAxes._gen_axes_spines(self)
            # The following is a hack to get the spines (i.e. the axes frame)
            # to draw correctly for a polygon frame.

            # spine_type must be 'left', 'right', 'top', 'bottom', or `circle`.
            spine_type = 'circle'
            verts = unit_poly_verts(theta)
            # close off polygon by repeating first vertex
            verts.append(verts[0])
            path = Path(verts)

            spine = Spine(self, spine_type, path)
            spine.set_transform(self.transAxes)
            return {'polar': spine}

    register_projection(RadarAxes)
    return theta

What is the rationale for this pattern?

Answer 1

It is an acceptable pattern and is used when you need a dynamically created class. For example in class decorators, the decorator function dynamically creates the decorated class and returns it.

Here the line register_projection(RadarAxes) is the reason for that pattern. I am not used to matplotlib, but I assume that register_projection takes here as parameter a subclass of PolarAxes. That subclass is dynamically created by the function using function parameters.

The language allows for dynamic creation of classes, this is a use case for a dynamically create class, so there is no problem in creating the class in a function.