How to get a function name as a string?

Question

In Python, how do I get a function name as a string, without calling the function?

def my_function():
    pass

print get_function_name_as_string(my_function         


        

Answer 1

I've seen a few answers that utilized decorators, though I felt a few were a bit verbose. Here's something I use for logging function names as well as their respective input and output values. I've adapted it here to just print the info rather than creating a log file and adapted it to apply to the OP specific example.

def debug(func=None):
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        try:
            function_name = func.__func__.__qualname__
        except:
            function_name = func.__qualname__
        return func(*args, **kwargs, function_name=function_name)
    return wrapper

@debug
def my_function(**kwargs):
    print(kwargs)

my_function()

Output:

{'function_name': 'my_function'}

Answer 2

As an extension of @Demyn's answer, I created some utility functions which print the current function's name and current function's arguments:

import inspect
import logging
import traceback

def get_function_name():
    return traceback.extract_stack(None, 2)[0][2]

def get_function_parameters_and_values():
    frame = inspect.currentframe().f_back
    args, _, _, values = inspect.getargvalues(frame)
    return ([(i, values[i]) for i in args])

def my_func(a, b, c=None):
    logging.info('Running ' + get_function_name() + '(' + str(get_function_parameters_and_values()) +')')
    pass

logger = logging.getLogger()
handler = logging.StreamHandler()
formatter = logging.Formatter(
    '%(asctime)s [%(levelname)s] -> %(message)s')
handler.setFormatter(formatter)
logger.addHandler(handler)
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

my_func(1, 3) # 2016-03-25 17:16:06,927 [INFO] -> Running my_func([('a', 1), ('b', 3), ('c', None)])

Answer 3

sys._getframe() is not guaranteed to be available in all implementations of Python (see ref) ,you can use the traceback module to do the same thing, eg.

import traceback
def who_am_i():
   stack = traceback.extract_stack()
   filename, codeline, funcName, text = stack[-2]

   return funcName

A call to stack[-1] will return the current process details.

Answer 4

You just want to get the name of the function here is a simple code for that. let say you have these functions defined

def function1():
    print "function1"

def function2():
    print "function2"

def function3():
    print "function3"
print function1.__name__

the output will be function1

Now let say you have these functions in a list

a = [function1 , function2 , funciton3]

to get the name of the functions

for i in a:
    print i.__name__

the output will be

function1
function2
function3

Answer 5

To get the current function's or method's name from inside it, consider:

import inspect

this_function_name = inspect.currentframe().f_code.co_name

sys._getframe also works instead of inspect.currentframe although the latter avoids accessing a private function.

To get the calling function's name instead, consider f_back as in inspect.currentframe().f_back.f_code.co_name.

---

If also using mypy, it can complain that:

error: Item "None" of "Optional[FrameType]" has no attribute "f_code"

To suppress the above error, consider:

import inspect
import types
from typing import cast

this_function_name = cast(types.FrameType, inspect.currentframe()).f_code.co_name

Answer 6

This function will return the caller's function name.

def func_name():
    import traceback
    return traceback.extract_stack(None, 2)[0][2]

It is like Albert Vonpupp's answer with a friendly wrapper.