abstract method

An abstract method is a method in an abstract base class (ABC) that you mark as abstract rather than making it fully concrete.

You mark abstract methods with the @abstractmethod decorator from the abc module. You use them to define a common interface that all concrete subclasses must implement. If any abstract methods remain unimplemented in a subclass, Python prevents you from instantiating that class, helping you catch design mistakes early.

You can still provide a default implementation inside an abstract method. Subclasses must override it to become instantiable, but they can call super() to reuse the shared behavior.

Example

>>> from abc import ABC, abstractmethod

>>> class Animal(ABC):
...     @abstractmethod
...     def speak(self):
...         """Return the sound this animal makes."""
...         ...
...

>>> Animal()
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class Animal
⮑ without an implementation for abstract method 'speak'

>>> class Dog(Animal):
...     def speak(self):
...         return "Woof!"
...
>>> Dog().speak()
'Woof!'