how to get derived class name from base class

Question

I have a base class Person and derived classes Manager and Employee. Now, what I would like to know is the object created is Manager or the Employee.

The person is given as belows:

from Project.CMFCore.utils import getToolByName schema = getattr(Person, 'schema', Schema(())).copy() + Schema((TextField('FirstName', required = True, widget = StringWidget(label='First Name', i18n_domain='project')), TextField('Last Name', required = True, widget = StringWidget(label='Last Name', i18n_domain='i5', label_msgid='label_pub_city')) class Manager(BaseContent):   def get_name(self):     catalog = getToolByName(self, "portal_catalog")       people = catalog(portal_type='Person')       person={}       for object in people:         fname = object.firstName         lname = object.lastName         person['name'] = fname+' '+ lname         # if the derived class is Employee then i would like go to the method title of employee and if its a Manager then go to the title method of Manager         person['post'] = Employee/Manager.title()       return person 

For Manager and employees they are like (employee is also similar but some different methods)

from Project.Person import Person class Manager(Person):     def title(self):       return "Manager" 

For Employee the title is 'Employee'. When I create a Person it is either Manager or the Employee. When I get the person object the class is Person but I would like to know whether it is from the derived class 'Manager' or 'Employee'.

Answer 1

I don't know if this is what you want, and the way you'd like it implemented, but here's a try:

>>> class Person(object):     def _type(self):         return self.__class__.__name__   >>> p = Person() >>> p._type() 'Person' >>> class Manager(Person):     pass  >>> m = Manager() >>> m._type() 'Manager' >>>  

Pros: only one definition of the _type method.

Answer 2

You can use x.__class__.__name__ to retrieve the class name as a string, e.g.

class Person:     pass  class Manager(Person):     pass  class Employee(Person):     pass  def get_class_name(instance):     return instance.__class__.__name__  >>> m = Manager() >>> print get_class_name(m) Manager >>> print get_class_name(Employee()) Employee 

Or, you could use isinstance to check for different types:

>>> print isinstance(m, Person) True >>> print isinstance(m, Manager) True >>> print isinstance(m, Employee) False 

So you could do something like this:

def handle_person(person):     if isinstance(person, Manager):         person.read_paper()     # method of Manager class only     elif isinstance(person, Employee):         person.work_hard()      # method of Employee class only     elif isinstance(person, Person):         person.blah()           # method of the base class     else:         print "Not a person"