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

[Dave Angel]

On 11/22/2012 11:12 AM, Thomas Bach wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:52:56AM -0500, Dave Angel wrote:
>> On 11/22/2012 10:14 AM, Marc Aymerich wrote:
>>> I want to create a method within a class that is able to accept either a class or an instance.
>>>
>> I haven't tried it, but how about if you do a @classmethod decorator,
>> and then just use isinstance(param, MyClass) ?
>>
> This won't work:
>
> In [22]: class Foo(object):
>    ....:     @classmethod
>    ....:     def bar(cls):
>    ....:         print repr(cls)
>    ....:         
>
> In [23]: Foo.bar()
> <class '__main__.Foo'>
>
> In [24]: Foo().bar()
> <class '__main__.Foo'>
>
> Actually help(classmethod) explicitly says so:
> <quote>
> It can be called either on the class (e.g. C.f()) or on an instance
> (e.g. C().f()).  The instance is ignored except for its class.
> </quote>

OK, thanks.  I hadn't tried it, and hadn't noticed that that decorator
converts to the class.

>
> I think the way to go is via the descriptor protocol[1] as suggested
> by Peter.
>
> Regards,
> 	Thomas.
>
>
> Footnotes: 
> [1] http://docs.python.org/3/howto/descriptor.html
>
The OP should probably use this link instead, since he's not using Python 3.

http://docs.python.org/2.7/howto/descriptor.html

Marc:  I believe the descriptor stuff has changed in Python 3;  I don't
use it.  But if you've got to do this, and you have to do it in Python
2.x, you'd better use the 2.x documentation.


-- 

DaveA