Getting the class name of an instance?

python introspection instanceof python-datamodel
Dan picture Dan · Feb 4, 2009 · Viewed 1M times · Source

How do I find out a name of class that created an instance of an object in Python if the function I am doing this from is the base class of which the class of the instance has been derived?

Was thinking maybe the inspect module might have helped me out here, but it doesn't seem to give me what I want. And short of parsing the __class__ member, I'm not sure how to get at this information.

Answer

sykora picture sykora · Feb 4, 2009

Have you tried the __name__ attribute of the class? ie type(x).__name__ will give you the name of the class, which I think is what you want.

>>> import itertools
>>> x = itertools.count(0)
>>> type(x).__name__
'count'

If you're still using Python 2, note that the above method works with new-style classes only (in Python 3+ all classes are "new-style" classes). Your code might use some old-style classes. The following works for both:

x.__class__.__name__

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