Retrieve Class Method List in Python

In Python, it is often necessary to determine the methods available within a class. This knowledge is essential for iterating through methods, handling class or instance objects differently based on their methods, and performing various introspection tasks.

To obtain a list of class methods, utilize the inspect.getmembers() function. It accepts a class as its first argument and a filter function as its second argument. By default, inspect.ismethod is employed as the filter, which ensures that only method members are returned.

Here's an example using the optparse.OptionParser class:

from optparse import OptionParser
import inspect

# Python 2
members = inspect.getmembers(OptionParser, predicate=inspect.ismethod)

# Python 3
members = inspect.getmembers(OptionParser, predicate=inspect.isfunction)

for name, member in members:
    print(name)

The output will list method names such as add_option, disable_interspersed_args, and others.

You can also pass an instance instead of a class to inspect.getmembers(). This allows you to examine the methods of a specific object.

By utilizing this technique, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of class methods, facilitating more precise and efficient code execution.