Can I find out (dynamically) where a method is defined?

[allendowney at gmail.com]

Thanks Maric!  That's very close to what I want, although using dir()
can be misleading because if you invoke it on class B you get all of
class A's methods as well.  I took your idea and wrote it up like
this:

def find_defining_class(obj, meth_name):
    """find and return the class object that will provide
    the definition of meth_name (as a string) if it is
    invoked on obj.
    """
    for ty in type(obj).mro():
        if meth_name in ty.__dict__:
            return ty
    return None

Cheers,
Allen



On Jun 9, 12:01 pm, Maric Michaud <ma... at aristote.info> wrote:
> Le Monday 09 June 2008 17:28:45 allendow... at gmail.com, vous avez écrit :
>
> > So, is there any way to inspect a method to see where (in what class)
> > it
> > is defined?
>
> In [56]: class a(object) :
>     def a() : return
>     def b() :  return
>    ....:
>    ....:
>
> In [59]: class b(a) :
>     def b() : return
>     def c() : return
>    ....:
>    ....:
>
> In [62]: i=b()
>
> In [63]: for m in 'a', 'b', 'c' :
>    ....:     print [ t for t in type(i).mro() if m in dir(t) ]
>    ....:
>    ....:
> [<class '__main__.a'>]
> [<class '__main__.b'>, <class '__main__.a'>]
> [<class '__main__.b'>]
>
> mro stands for "method resolution order", check the reference on this
> and "super", it worths the effort.
>