How to get a complete list of object s methods and attributes

Question

dir re compile pattern      does not return pattern as one of the lists s elements  Namely it returns       copy        deepcopy      findall    finditer    match    scanner    search    split    sub    subn     According to the manual  it is supposed to contain      the object s attributes  names  the   names of its class s attributes  and   recursively of the attributes of its   class s base classes    It says also that     The list is not necessarily complete    Is there a way to get the complete list  I always assumed that dir returns a complete list but apparently it does not     Also  is there a way to list only attributes  Or only methods   Edit  this is actually a bug in python -  supposedly it is fixed in the 3 0 branch  and perhaps also in 2 6

User · Answer

This is how I do it  useful for simple custom objects to which you keep adding attributes   Given an object created with obj   type  Obj   object        or by simply    class Obj  pass obj   Obj     Add some attributes   obj name    gary  obj age   32   then  to obtain a dictionary with only the custom attributes    key  value for key  value in obj   dict   items   if not key startswith             name    gary    age   32

User · Answer

For the complete list of attributes  the short answer is  no  The problem is that the attributes are actually defined as the arguments accepted by the getattr built-in function  As the user can reimplement   getattr    suddenly allowing any kind of attribute  there is no possible generic way to generate that list  The dir function returns the keys in the   dict   attribute  i e  all the attributes accessible if the   getattr   method is not reimplemented   For the second question  it does not really make sense  Actually  methods are callable attributes  nothing more  You could though filter callable attributes  and  using the inspect module determine the class methods  methods or functions

User · Answer

That is why the new   dir     method has been added in python 2 6  see    http   docs python org whatsnew 2 6 html other-language-changes  scroll down a little bit  http   bugs python org issue1591665

User · Answer

This is how I do it  useful for simple custom objects to which you keep adding attributes   Given an object created with obj   type  Obj   object        or by simply    class Obj  pass obj   Obj     Add some attributes   obj name    gary  obj age   32   then  to obtain a dictionary with only the custom attributes    key  value for key  value in obj   dict   items   if not key startswith             name    gary    age   32

User · Answer

Only to supplement    dir   is the most powerful fundamental tool   Most recommended  Solutions other than dir   merely provide their way of dealing the output of dir     Listing 2nd level attributes or not  it is important to do the sifting by yourself  because sometimes you may want to sift out internal vars with leading underscores     but sometimes you may well need the   doc   doc-string    dir     and dir   returns identical content    dict   and dir   are different    dict   returns incomplete content  IMPORTANT    dir     can be sometimes overwritten with a function  value or type  by the author for whatever purpose   Here is an example          torchfun py in traverse self  mod  search attributes  445             if prefix in traversed mod names  446                 continue 447             names   dir m  448             for name in names  449                 obj   getattr m name    TypeError  descriptor   dir   of  object  object needs an argument  The author of PyTorch modified the   dir     method to something that requires an argument  This modification makes dir   fail  If you want a reliable scheme to traverse all attributes of an object  do remember that every pythonic standard can be overridden and may not hold  and every convention may be unreliable

User · Answer

For the complete list of attributes  the short answer is  no  The problem is that the attributes are actually defined as the arguments accepted by the getattr built-in function  As the user can reimplement   getattr    suddenly allowing any kind of attribute  there is no possible generic way to generate that list  The dir function returns the keys in the   dict   attribute  i e  all the attributes accessible if the   getattr   method is not reimplemented   For the second question  it does not really make sense  Actually  methods are callable attributes  nothing more  You could though filter callable attributes  and  using the inspect module determine the class methods  methods or functions

User · Answer

That is why the new   dir     method has been added in python 2 6  see    http   docs python org whatsnew 2 6 html other-language-changes  scroll down a little bit  http   bugs python org issue1591665

User · Answer

Here is a practical addition to the answers of PierreBdR and Moe      For Python    2 6 and new-style classes  dir   seems to be enough  For old-style classes  we can at least do what a standard module does to support tab completion  in addition to dir    look for   class    and then to go for its   bases       code borrowed from the rlcompleter module   tested under Python 2 6   sys version    2 6 5  r265 79063  Apr 16 2010  13 09 56   n GCC 4 4 3        or  from rlcompleter import get class members def get class members klass       ret   dir klass      if hasattr klass    bases              for base in klass   bases                ret   ret   get class members base      return ret   def uniq  seq             the  set    way   use dict when there s no set           return list set seq     def get object attrs  obj          code borrowed from the rlcompleter module   see the code for Completer  attr matches         ret   dir  obj          if    builtins    in ret            ret remove    builtins          if hasattr  obj     class              ret append    class             ret extend  get class members obj   class               ret   uniq  ret        return ret     Test code and output are deleted for brevity  but basically for new-style objects we seem to have the same results for get object attrs   as for dir    and for old-style classes the main addition to the dir   output seem to be the   class   attribute

User · Answer

That is why the new   dir     method has been added in python 2 6  see    http   docs python org whatsnew 2 6 html other-language-changes  scroll down a little bit  http   bugs python org issue1591665

User · Answer

Only to supplement    dir   is the most powerful fundamental tool   Most recommended  Solutions other than dir   merely provide their way of dealing the output of dir     Listing 2nd level attributes or not  it is important to do the sifting by yourself  because sometimes you may want to sift out internal vars with leading underscores     but sometimes you may well need the   doc   doc-string    dir     and dir   returns identical content    dict   and dir   are different    dict   returns incomplete content  IMPORTANT    dir     can be sometimes overwritten with a function  value or type  by the author for whatever purpose   Here is an example          torchfun py in traverse self  mod  search attributes  445             if prefix in traversed mod names  446                 continue 447             names   dir m  448             for name in names  449                 obj   getattr m name    TypeError  descriptor   dir   of  object  object needs an argument  The author of PyTorch modified the   dir     method to something that requires an argument  This modification makes dir   fail  If you want a reliable scheme to traverse all attributes of an object  do remember that every pythonic standard can be overridden and may not hold  and every convention may be unreliable

User · Answer

That is why the new   dir     method has been added in python 2 6  see    http   docs python org whatsnew 2 6 html other-language-changes  scroll down a little bit  http   bugs python org issue1591665

User · Answer

Here is a practical addition to the answers of PierreBdR and Moe      For Python    2 6 and new-style classes  dir   seems to be enough  For old-style classes  we can at least do what a standard module does to support tab completion  in addition to dir    look for   class    and then to go for its   bases       code borrowed from the rlcompleter module   tested under Python 2 6   sys version    2 6 5  r265 79063  Apr 16 2010  13 09 56   n GCC 4 4 3        or  from rlcompleter import get class members def get class members klass       ret   dir klass      if hasattr klass    bases              for base in klass   bases                ret   ret   get class members base      return ret   def uniq  seq             the  set    way   use dict when there s no set           return list set seq     def get object attrs  obj          code borrowed from the rlcompleter module   see the code for Completer  attr matches         ret   dir  obj          if    builtins    in ret            ret remove    builtins          if hasattr  obj     class              ret append    class             ret extend  get class members obj   class               ret   uniq  ret        return ret     Test code and output are deleted for brevity  but basically for new-style objects we seem to have the same results for get object attrs   as for dir    and for old-style classes the main addition to the dir   output seem to be the   class   attribute

User · Answer

For the complete list of attributes  the short answer is  no  The problem is that the attributes are actually defined as the arguments accepted by the getattr built-in function  As the user can reimplement   getattr    suddenly allowing any kind of attribute  there is no possible generic way to generate that list  The dir function returns the keys in the   dict   attribute  i e  all the attributes accessible if the   getattr   method is not reimplemented   For the second question  it does not really make sense  Actually  methods are callable attributes  nothing more  You could though filter callable attributes  and  using the inspect module determine the class methods  methods or functions

User · Answer

For the complete list of attributes  the short answer is  no  The problem is that the attributes are actually defined as the arguments accepted by the getattr built-in function  As the user can reimplement   getattr    suddenly allowing any kind of attribute  there is no possible generic way to generate that list  The dir function returns the keys in the   dict   attribute  i e  all the attributes accessible if the   getattr   method is not reimplemented   For the second question  it does not really make sense  Actually  methods are callable attributes  nothing more  You could though filter callable attributes  and  using the inspect module determine the class methods  methods or functions

[python] How to get a complete list of object's methods and attributes?

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