When to pull default values from a file?
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Not a specific coding question so much as program structure in general.

I'm one of those poorly self taught hobby programmers and I've got no idea what the best route is here. I want to create an object with 4 variables (name, objID, a, and b). For example:

    class myObj:
        def __init__(self, objName, objID):
            self.name = objName
            self.objID = objID
            self.a = 0
            self.b = 0

My question/problem is I want the initial values for a and b to be pulled from a .txt file, based on the value of objID. I actually want more than just 2 variables, and I'll be creating hundreds of these objects with a dozen different types.

I don't think I want to read the file from this class, as I believe it will reopen the file every time an object is created, and I don't really like pulling it into a list/array/dictionary and passing it to the class because the myObj class will only be called from an object above it, also with dozens of instances.

To clarify - I plan to create 100 'topObj' objects, each with 5-10 'myObj' objects, with each 'myObj' having starting values (that will change later), pulled from a text file, and I don't know when and where to read the data from the text file without reading it 500-1000 times.

Hopefully this makes some semblance of sense.

Thanks,  
db_