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In general, you can use namedtuple instances wherever you need a tuple-like object. Named tuples have the advantage that they provide a way to access their values using field names and the dot notation. This will make your code more Pythonic.
Finally, namedtuple s are ordered, unlike regular dict s, so you get the items in the order you defined the fields, unlike a dict . If you need more flexibility, attrs is an interesting alternative to namedtuple. If you're using Python 3.7 or CPython 3.6 dicts are insertion ordered.
Namedtuple makes your tuples self-document. You can easily understand what is going on by having a quick glance at your code. And as you are not bound to use integer indexes to access members of a tuple, it makes it more easy to maintain your code.
Benefits of Python Namedtuple Unlike a regular tuple, python namedtuple can also access values using names of the fields. 2. Python namedtuple is just as memory-efficient as a regular tuple, because it does not have per-instance dictionaries. This is also why it is faster than a dictionary.
In dicts, only the keys have to be hashable, not the values. namedtuples don't have keys, so hashability isn't an issue.
However, they have a more stringent restriction -- their key-equivalents, "field names", have to be strings.
Basically, if you were going to create a bunch of instances of a class like:
class Container:
def __init__(self, name, date, foo, bar):
self.name = name
self.date = date
self.foo = foo
self.bar = bar
mycontainer = Container(name, date, foo, bar)
and not change the attributes after you set them in __init__, you could instead use
Container = namedtuple('Container', ['name', 'date', 'foo', 'bar'])
mycontainer = Container(name, date, foo, bar)
as a replacement.
Of course, you could create a bunch of dicts where you used the same keys in each one, but assuming you will have only valid Python identifiers as keys and don't need mutability,
mynamedtuple.fieldname
is prettier than
mydict['fieldname']
and
mynamedtuple = MyNamedTuple(firstvalue, secondvalue)
is prettier than
mydict = {'fieldname': firstvalue, 'secondfield': secondvalue}
Finally, namedtuples are ordered, unlike regular dicts, so you get the items in the order you defined the fields, unlike a dict.
Tuples are immutable, whether named or not. namedtuple only makes the access more convenient, by using names instead of indices. You can only use valid identifiers for namedtuple, it doesn't perform any hashing — it generates a new type instead.
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