What is class method?

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Hussein B <hubaghdadi at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
> I'm familiar with static method concept, but what is the class method?
> how it does differ from static method? when to use it?
> --
> class M:
>  def method(cls, x):
>     pass
>
>  method = classmethod(method)

Use it when your method needs to know what class it is called from.
This makes sense in the context of subclassing:

class M(object):
  @classmethod
  def method(cls, x):
    print cls, x

class N(M):
  pass

>>> M.method(1)
<class '__main__.M'> 1
>>> N.method(1)
<class '__main__.N'> 1