Visualize class inheritance hierarchy

[Christian Heimes]

Rob Kirkpatrick wrote:
> I'm assuming this has been discussed before, but I'm lacking any
> Google keywords that bring up the appropriate discussion.

You are looking for "mro" aka method resolution order. The inspect 
module contains several helper functions to inspect a class hierarchy.

The following interactive session should give you an impression how to 
use the functions:

 >>> import inspect
 >>> import pprint
 >>> from sqlalchemy.types import DateTime

 >>> inspect.getmro(DateTime)
(<class 'sqlalchemy.types.DateTime'>, <class 
'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>, <class 'sqlalchemy.types.AbstractType'>, 
<type 'object'>
 >>> DateTime.__bases__
(<class 'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>,)

 >>> pprint.pprint(inspect.getclasstree(inspect.getmro(DateTime)))
[(<type 'object'>, ()),
  [(<class 'sqlalchemy.types.AbstractType'>, (<type 'object'>,)),
   [(<class 'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>,
     (<class 'sqlalchemy.types.AbstractType'>,)),
    [(<class 'sqlalchemy.types.DateTime'>,
      (<class 'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>,))]]]]

 >>> [cls for cls in inspect.getmro(DateTime) if hasattr(cls, '__init__')]
[<class 'sqlalchemy.types.DateTime'>, <class 
'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>, <class 'sqlalchemy.types.AbstractType'>, 
<type 'object'>]

 >>> [cls for cls in inspect.getmro(DateTime) if hasattr(cls, 'adapt')]
[<class 'sqlalchemy.types.DateTime'>, <class 'sqlalchemy.types.TypeEngine'>]