Why do we use __init__ in Python classes?

I am having trouble understanding the Initialization of classes.

What's the point of them and how do we know what to include in them? Does writing in classes require a different type of thinking versus creating functions (I figured I could just create functions and then just wrap them in a class so I can re-use them. Will that work?)

Here's an example:

class crawler:
  # Initialize the crawler with the name of database
  def __init__(self,dbname):
    self.con=sqlite.connect(dbname)

  def __del__(self):
    self.con.close()

  def dbcommit(self):
    self.con.commit()

Or another code sample:

class bicluster:
  def __init__(self,vec,left=None,right=None,distance=0.0,id=None):
    self.left=left
    self.right=right
    self.vec=vec
    self.id=id
    self.distance=distance

There are so many classes with __init__ I come across when trying to read other people's code, but I don't understand the logic in creating them.

By what you wrote, you are missing a critical piece of understanding: the difference between a class and an object. __init__ doesn't initialize a class, it initializes an instance of a class or an object. Each dog has colour, but dogs as a class don't. Each dog has four or fewer feet, but the class of dogs doesn't. The class is a concept of an object. When you see Fido and Spot, you recognise their similarity, their doghood. That's the class.

When you say

class Dog:
    def __init__(self, legs, colour):
        self.legs = legs
        self.colour = colour

fido = Dog(4, "brown")
spot = Dog(3, "mostly yellow")

You're saying, Fido is a brown dog with 4 legs while Spot is a bit of a cripple and is mostly yellow. The __init__ function is called a constructor, or initializer, and is automatically called when you create a new instance of a class. Within that function, the newly created object is assigned to the parameter self. The notation self.legs is an attribute called legs of the object in the variable self. Attributes are kind of like variables, but they describe the state of an object, or particular actions (functions) available to the object.

However, notice that you don't set colour for the doghood itself - it's an abstract concept. There are attributes that make sense on classes. For instance, population_size is one such - it doesn't make sense to count the Fido because Fido is always one. It does make sense to count dogs. Let us say there're 200 million dogs in the world. It's the property of the Dog class. Fido has nothing to do with the number 200 million, nor does Spot. It's called a "class attribute", as opposed to "instance attributes" that are colour or legs above.

Now, to something less canine and more programming-related. As I write below, class to add things is not sensible - what is it a class of? Classes in Python make up of collections of different data, that behave similarly. Class of dogs consists of Fido and Spot and 199999999998 other animals similar to them, all of them peeing on lampposts. What does the class for adding things consist of? By what data inherent to them do they differ? And what actions do they share?

However, numbers... those are more interesting subjects. Say, Integers. There's a lot of them, a lot more than dogs. I know that Python already has integers, but let's play dumb and "implement" them again (by cheating and using Python's integers).

So, Integers are a class. They have some data (value), and some behaviours ("add me to this other number"). Let's show this:

class MyInteger:
    def __init__(self, newvalue):
        # imagine self as an index card.
        # under the heading of "value", we will write
        # the contents of the variable newvalue.
        self.value = newvalue
    def add(self, other):
        # when an integer wants to add itself to another integer,
        # we'll take their values and add them together,
        # then make a new integer with the result value.
        return MyInteger(self.value + other.value)

three = MyInteger(3)
# three now contains an object of class MyInteger
# three.value is now 3
five = MyInteger(5)
# five now contains an object of class MyInteger
# five.value is now 5
eight = three.add(five)
# here, we invoked the three's behaviour of adding another integer
# now, eight.value is three.value + five.value = 3 + 5 = 8
print eight.value
# ==> 8

This is a bit fragile (we're assuming other will be a MyInteger), but we'll ignore now. In real code, we wouldn't; we'd test it to make sure, and maybe even coerce it ("you're not an integer? by golly, you have 10 nanoseconds to become one! 9... 8....")

We could even define fractions. Fractions also know how to add themselves.

class MyFraction:
    def __init__(self, newnumerator, newdenominator):
        self.numerator = newnumerator
        self.denominator = newdenominator
        # because every fraction is described by these two things
    def add(self, other):
        newdenominator = self.denominator * other.denominator
        newnumerator = self.numerator * other.denominator + self.denominator * other.numerator
        return MyFraction(newnumerator, newdenominator)

There's even more fractions than integers (not really, but computers don't know that). Let's make two:

half = MyFraction(1, 2)
third = MyFraction(1, 3)
five_sixths = half.add(third)
print five_sixths.numerator
# ==> 5
print five_sixths.denominator
# ==> 6

You're not actually declaring anything here. Attributes are like a new kind of variable. Normal variables only have one value. Let us say you write colour = "grey". You can't have another variable named colour that is "fuchsia" - not in the same place in the code.

Arrays solve that to a degree. If you say colour = ["grey", "fuchsia"], you have stacked two colours into the variable, but you distinguish them by their position (0, or 1, in this case).

Attributes are variables that are bound to an object. Like with arrays, we can have plenty colour variables, on different dogs. So, fido.colour is one variable, but spot.colour is another. The first one is bound to the object within the variable fido; the second, spot. Now, when you call Dog(4, "brown"), or three.add(five), there will always be an invisible parameter, which will be assigned to the dangling extra one at the front of the parameter list. It is conventionally called self, and will get the value of the object in front of the dot. Thus, within the Dog's __init__ (constructor), self will be whatever the new Dog will turn out to be; within MyInteger's add, self will be bound to the object in the variable three. Thus, three.value will be the same variable outside the add, as self.value within the add.

If I say the_mangy_one = fido, I will start referring to the object known as fido with yet another name. From now on, fido.colour is exactly the same variable as the_mangy_one.colour.

So, the things inside the __init__. You can think of them as noting things into the Dog's birth certificate. colour by itself is a random variable, could contain anything. fido.colour or self.colour is like a form field on the Dog's identity sheet; and __init__ is the clerk filling it out for the first time.

Any clearer?

EDIT: Expanding on the comment below:

You mean a list of objects, don't you?

First of all, fido is actually not an object. It is a variable, which is currently containing an object, just like when you say x = 5, x is a variable currently containing the number five. If you later change your mind, you can do fido = Cat(4, "pleasing") (as long as you've created a class Cat), and fido would from then on "contain" a cat object. If you do fido = x, it will then contain the number five, and not an animal object at all.

A class by itself doesn't know its instances unless you specifically write code to keep track of them. For instance:

class Cat:
    census = [] #define census array

    def __init__(self, legs, colour):
        self.colour = colour
        self.legs = legs
        Cat.census.append(self)

Here, census is a class-level attribute of Cat class.

fluffy = Cat(4, "white")
spark = Cat(4, "fiery")
Cat.census
# ==> [<__main__.Cat instance at 0x108982cb0>, <__main__.Cat instance at 0x108982e18>]
# or something like that

Note that you won't get [fluffy, sparky]. Those are just variable names. If you want cats themselves to have names, you have to make a separate attribute for the name, and then override the __str__ method to return this name. This method's (i.e. class-bound function, just like add or __init__) purpose is to describe how to convert the object to a string, like when you print it out.

To contribute my 5 cents to the thorough explanation from Amadan.

Where classes are a description "of a type" in an abstract way. Objects are their realizations: the living breathing thing. In the object-orientated world there are principal ideas you can almost call the essence of everything. They are:

1. encapsulation (won't elaborate on this)
2. inheritance
3. polymorphism

Objects have one, or more characteristics (= Attributes) and behaviors (= Methods). The behavior mostly depends on the characteristics. Classes define what the behavior should accomplish in a general way, but as long as the class is not realized (instantiated) as an object it remains an abstract concept of a possibility. Let me illustrate with the help of "inheritance" and "polymorphism".

    class Human:
        gender
        nationality
        favorite_drink
        core_characteristic
        favorite_beverage
        name
        age

        def love    
        def drink
        def laugh
        def do_your_special_thing                

    class Americans(Humans)
        def drink(beverage):
            if beverage != favorite_drink: print "You call that a drink?"
            else: print "Great!" 

    class French(Humans)
        def drink(beverage, cheese):
            if beverage == favourite_drink and cheese == None: print "No cheese?" 
            elif beverage != favourite_drink and cheese == None: print "Révolution!"

    class Brazilian(Humans)
        def do_your_special_thing
            win_every_football_world_cup()

    class Germans(Humans)
        def drink(beverage):
            if favorite_drink != beverage: print "I need more beer"
            else: print "Lecker!" 

    class HighSchoolStudent(Americans):
        def __init__(self, name, age):
             self.name = name
             self.age = age

jeff = HighSchoolStudent(name, age):
hans = Germans()
ronaldo = Brazilian()
amelie = French()

for friends in [jeff, hans, ronaldo]:
    friends.laugh()
    friends.drink("cola")
    friends.do_your_special_thing()

print amelie.love(jeff)
>>> True
print ronaldo.love(hans)
>>> False

Some characteristics define human beings. But every nationality differs somewhat. So "national-types" are kinda Humans with extras. "Americans" are a type of "Humans " and inherit some abstract characteristics and behavior from the human type (base-class) : that's inheritance. So all Humans can laugh and drink, therefore all child-classes can also! Inheritance (2).

But because they are all of the same kind (Type/base-class : Humans) you can exchange them sometimes: see the for-loop at the end. But they will expose an individual characteristic, and thats Polymorphism (3).

So each human has a favorite_drink, but every nationality tend towards a special kind of drink. If you subclass a nationality from the type of Humans you can overwrite the inherited behavior as I have demonstrated above with the drink() Method. But that's still at the class-level and because of this it's still a generalization.

hans = German(favorite_drink = "Cola")

instantiates the class German and I "changed" a default characteristic at the beginning. (But if you call hans.drink('Milk') he would still print "I need more beer" - an obvious bug ... or maybe that's what i would call a feature if i would be a Employee of a bigger Company. ;-)! )

The characteristic of a type e.g. Germans (hans) are usually defined through the constructor (in python : __init__) at the moment of the instantiation. This is the point where you define a class to become an object. You could say breath life into an abstract concept (class) by filling it with individual characteristics and becoming an object.

But because every object is an instance of a class they share all some basic characteristic-types and some behavior. This is a major advantage of the object-orientated concept.

To protect the characteristics of each object you encapsulate them - means you try to couple behavior and characteristic and make it hard to manipulate it from outside the object. That's Encapsulation (1)