check if var is dict

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Astan Chee a écrit :
> Hi,
> I have a variable, I want to check if it is a dictionary or a string.
> Is there any better way to do this than I've done. How I did it is by 
> doing a .items() and catching a AttributeError that it raises if its not 
> a dictionary.
> How do i properly do it?

Checking the presence of one (or more) attributes of the object is so 
far the best thing to do. Now wrt/ *how* to check, using hasattr() or 
getattr() might be better than a try/except block:

def my_func(some_obj):
   if callable(getattr(obj, 'items', None)) \
      and callable(getattr(obj, 'keys', None)):
        use_obj_as_a_dict(...)
   else:
       use_obj_as_a_string(...)

Now keep in mind that this may lead to false positives if you don't 
carefully choose the attribute(s) to check the presence of...