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

[Marc Aymerich]

On Thursday, November 22, 2012 5:26:59 PM UTC+1, Dave Angel wrote:
> 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.
> 


thanks for the links Thomas and Dave, I'm going to read this documentation right now, I love to learn this kind of python 'internals' :)