How do I get the string with name of a class?

Question

What method do I call to get the name of a class?

score 63 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 16 '08 at 18:28

63

In [1]: class test(object):
   ...:     pass
   ...: 

In [2]: test.__name__
Out[2]: 'test'

answered Sep 16 '08 at 18:28

Mr Shark

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clahey · Answer 2 · 2008-09-16T19:05:56.960

43

It's not a method, it's a field. The field is called __name__. class.__name__ will give the name of the class as a string. object.__class__.__name__ will give the name of the class of an object.

edited Sep 16 '08 at 19:05

answered Sep 16 '08 at 18:27

clahey

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1

Better written as `type(object).__name__`. – Hans Ginzel Mar 17 '21 at 15:04

score 12 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 10 '13 at 17:32

12

I agree with Mr.Shark, but if you have an instance of a class, you'll need to use its __class__ member:

>>> class test():
...     pass
...
>>> a_test = test()
>>>
>>> a_test.__name__
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: test instance has no attribute '__name__'
>>>
>>> a_test.__class__
<class __main__.test at 0x009EEDE0>

edited Apr 10 '13 at 17:32

David C

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answered Sep 17 '08 at 13:26

Jon Cage

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Thanks! This helped dynamically naming a new class created with `type` and multiple bases. (e.g.: `type('_'.join(x.__name__ for x in bases), bases, {})`) – Wesley Baugh Mar 13 '13 at 01:03

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 06 '18 at 14:30

From Python 3.3 and onwards we can use __qualname__ field for both classes & functions.

It differs from __name__ field for nested objects like class defined in other class

>>> class A:
        class B:
            pass
>>> A.B.__name__
'B'
>>> A.B.__qualname__
'A.B'

which may be quite useful.

How do I get the string with name of a class?

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