method that can be called from a class and also from an instance

[Peter Otten]

Marc Aymerich wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I want to create a method within a class that is able to accept either a
> class or an instance.
> 
> class MyClass(object):
>     @magic_decorator
>     def method(param):
>         # param can be MyClass (cls) or an instance of MyClass (self)
> 
> so I can do something like:
> 
> instance = MyClass()
> 
> MyClass.method()
> instance.method()
> 
> I guess the way to go is implementing a custom decorator (@magic_decorator
> in my example), but, how can I know if the method has been called from the
> class o from an instance?
> 
> Thank you very much!!

Why would you overload a method that way?

$ cat class_or_inst.py
import functools

class desc(object):
    def __init__(self, f):
        self._f = f
    def __get__(self, inst=None, class_=None):
        if inst is not None:
            return functools.partial(self._f, self=inst)
        elif class_ is not None:
            return functools.partial(self._f, class_=class_)
        raise TypeError("nobody expects the Spanish inquisition")



class A(object):
    @desc
    def f(self=None, class_=None):
        if self is not None:
            return "instance"
        elif class_ is not None:
            return "class"
        return "unknown"
$ python -i class_or_inst.py 
>>> A.f()
'class'
>>> A().f()
'instance'
>>> A.__dict__["f"].__get__()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "class_or_inst.py", line 11, in __get__
    raise TypeError("nobody expects the Spanish inquisition")
TypeError: nobody expects the Spanish inquisition