How to find out what methods, properties, etc a python module possesses

Question

Lets say I import a module. In order for me to make the best use of it, I would like to know what properties, methods, etc. that I can use. Is there a way to find that out?

As an example: Determining running programs in Python

In this line:

os.system('WMIC /OUTPUT:C:\ProcessList.txt PROCESS get Caption,Commandline,Processid') 

Let's say I wanted to also print out the memory consumed by the processes. How do I find out if that's possible? And what would be the correct 'label' for it? (just as the author uses 'Commandline', 'ProcessId')

Similarly, in this:

import win32com.client def find_process(name):     objWMIService = win32com.client.Dispatch("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")     objSWbemServices = objWMIService.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")     colItems = objSWbemServices.ExecQuery(          "Select * from Win32_Process where Caption = '{0}'".format(name))     return len(colItems)  print find_process("SciTE.exe") 

How would I make the function also print out the memory consumed, the executable path, etc.?

Answer 1

As for Python modules, you can do

>>> import module >>> help(module) 

and you'll get a list of supported methods (more exactly, you get the docstring, which might not contain every single method). If you want that, you can use

>>> dir(module) 

although now you'd just get a long list of all properties, methods, classes etc. in that module.

In your first example, you're calling an external program, though. Of course Python has no idea which features wmic.exe has. How should it?

Answer 2

dir(module) returns the names of the attributes of the module

module.__dict__ is the mapping between the keys and the attributes objects themselves

module.__dict__.keys() and dir(module) are lists having the same elements, though they are not equals because the elements aren't in same order in them

it seems that help(module) iswhat you really need