Appending from a deck of cards list to a players hand list in python

Question

I have been trying for about a week now to make this work. My goal is to take the list of cards and append list item 0, 1, and 2 to the user_hand list. When ever I run the code I get things such as <main.Card object at 0x0000021DA02924D0> printed instead of A♥. What am I doing incorrectly to produce such an error? This is my first time working with python Classes, so I could be tripping up there.

import random
user_hand = []
class Card():
    def __init__(self, name, suit):
        self.name = name
        self.suit = suit
    def print_card(self):
        suits = {"H":"♥","D":"♦","C":"♣","S":"♠"}
        print(f"{self.name}{suits[self.suit]}")

class Carddeck():
    def __init__(self):
        self.cards = []
        
        names = ("2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "J", "Q", "K", "A")
        suits = ("H", "D", "C", "S")

        for suit in suits:
            for name in names:
                card = Card(name, suit)
                self.cards.append(card)

    def cupid(self):
        random.shuffle(self.cards)

    def dealing(self):
        user_hand.append(self.cards[0])
        user_hand.append(self.cards[1])
        user_hand.append(self.cards[2])

card = Card("A", "H")
card.print_card()
deck = Carddeck() # creates the deck.
deck.cupid() # shuffles the deck
deck.dealing() # deals to player, but this gives the strange output
for card in deck.cards:
    card.print_card()
print(user_hand)

Answer 1

When python tries to print the list, it prints the representation of each of the objects. You can customize this behavior by using __repr__. You already have a print_card method, so you can just modify this. Then, to print the card, it's simply print(my_card).

import random
user_hand = []
class Card():
    def __init__(self, name, suit):
        self.name = name
        self.suit = suit

    def __repr__(self):  # python uses this to print itself
        suits = {"H":"♥","D":"♦","C":"♣","S":"♠"}
        return f"{self.name}{suits[self.suit]}"

class Carddeck():
    def __init__(self):
        self.cards = []
        
        names = ("2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "J", "Q", "K", "A")
        suits = ("H", "D", "C", "S")

        for suit in suits:
            for name in names:
                card = Card(name, suit)
                self.cards.append(card)

    def cupid(self):
        random.shuffle(self.cards)

    def dealing(self):
        user_hand.append(self.cards[0])
        user_hand.append(self.cards[1])
        user_hand.append(self.cards[2])

card = Card("A", "H")
print(card)
deck = Carddeck()
deck.cupid()
deck.dealing()
for card in deck.cards:
    print(card)
print(user_hand)
# A♥
# 8♠
# 10♦
# 2♠
# 2♦
# ...
# [8♠, 10♦, 2♠]

Answer 2

I would create a new class called Player and have self.hand as an empty list and then you can populate the hand with drawn cards

You will also need to define show in the Card class as your print(f"{self.name}{self.suit}")

As well as instead of dealing, which you used, I use

def drawCard(self): 
     card = self.cards.pop() 
     return card

#Create Player      
class Player(object):
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
        self.hand = []
    
    def draw(self, deck):
        self.hand.append(deck.drawCard())

    def showHand(self):
        for card in self.hand:
            card.show()
            
    def showcard(self):     
        for card in self.hand:
            card.render()
    
    def discard(self):
        return self.hand.pop()

Then you can do

bob = Player("Bob")
for _ in range(3):
     bob.draw(deck)
bob.showHand()