04. Tips & Tricks

Exporting properties to other constructs

When marking an attribute as private in a Python class (e.g., self.__name = "John"), it’s name‑mangled and not directly accessible from other constructs.

To expose such values to other constructs while keeping the attribute encapsulated, it is possible to provide a read-only property using the @property decorator.

class Person(Construct):
    def __init__(self, scope: Construct, id: str, *, name: str, **kwargs) -> None:
        super().__init__(scope, id, **kwargs)
        self.__name = name
 
    @property
    def name(self) -> str:
        """Read-only access for other constructs."""
        return self.__name

Usage outside of the construct:

person = Person(self, "Person")
print(person.name)  # accesses the exposed property