How to check whether a variable is a class or not?

python reflection
jeeyoungk picture jeeyoungk · Dec 28, 2008 · Viewed 175.2k times · Source

I was wondering how to check whether a variable is a class (not an instance!) or not.

I've tried to use the function isinstance(object, class_or_type_or_tuple) to do this, but I don't know what type would a class will have.

For example, in the following code

class Foo: pass  
isinstance(Foo, **???**) # i want to make this return True.

I tried to substitute "class" with ???, but I realized that class is a keyword in python.

Answer

Benjamin Peterson picture Benjamin Peterson · Dec 28, 2008

Even better: use the inspect.isclass function.

>>> import inspect
>>> class X(object):
...     pass
... 
>>> inspect.isclass(X)
True

>>> x = X()
>>> isinstance(x, X)
True
>>> y = 25
>>> isinstance(y, X)
False

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