Determining the Class Name of an Object Instance in Python

When working with objects in Python, it can be useful to identify the class from which they were instantiated. Two common approaches involve using the inspect module or accessing the class attribute. However, a simpler and more accessible method is utilizing the name attribute of the class.

Using the name Attribute of the Class

The name attribute provides the name of the class associated with an object instance. This attribute can be accessed directly through the following syntax:

type(x).__name__

Where x is the object instance whose class name you wish to determine.

Example:

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

This example returns "count," indicating that the object instance x was created from the count class within the itertools module.

Compatibility with Python Versions

The name attribute method is compatible with both Python 2 and Python 3. In Python 2, this method only works with new-style classes. If your code still uses old-style classes, you can use the following alternative:

x.__class__.__name__

This approach works for both old-style and new-style classes in both Python 2 and Python 3.