How do I look inside a Python object?

Question

I\'m starting to code in various projects using Python (including Django web development and Panda3D game development).

To help me understand what\'s going on, I wo

Answer 1

You can list the attributes of a object with dir() in the shell:

>>> dir(object())
['__class__', '__delattr__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__']

Of course, there is also the inspect module: http://docs.python.org/library/inspect.html#module-inspect

Answer 2

Many good tipps already, but the shortest and easiest (not necessarily the best) has yet to be mentioned:

object?

Answer 3

Try ppretty

from ppretty import ppretty


class A(object):
    s = 5

    def __init__(self):
        self._p = 8

    @property
    def foo(self):
        return range(10)


print ppretty(A(), indent='    ', depth=2, width=30, seq_length=6,
              show_protected=True, show_private=False, show_static=True,
              show_properties=True, show_address=True)

Output:

__main__.A at 0x1debd68L (
    _p = 8, 
    foo = [0, 1, 2, ..., 7, 8, 9], 
    s = 5
)

Answer 4

There is a python code library build just for this purpose: inspect Introduced in Python 2.7

Answer 5

vars(obj) returns the attributes of an object.

Answer 6

Others have already mentioned the dir() built-in which sounds like what you're looking for, but here's another good tip. Many libraries -- including most of the standard library -- are distributed in source form. Meaning you can pretty easily read the source code directly. The trick is in finding it; for example:

>>> import string
>>> string.__file__
'/usr/lib/python2.5/string.pyc'

The *.pyc file is compiled, so remove the trailing 'c' and open up the uncompiled *.py file in your favorite editor or file viewer:

/usr/lib/python2.5/string.py

I've found this incredibly useful for discovering things like which exceptions are raised from a given API. This kind of detail is rarely well-documented in the Python world.