Getting the class name of an instance?

Have you tried the __name__ attribute of the class? ie type(x).__name__ will give you the name of the class, which I think is what you want.

>>> import itertools
>>> x = itertools.count(0)
>>> type(x).__name__
'count'

If you're still using Python 2, note that the above method works with new-style classes only (in Python 3+ all classes are "new-style" classes). Your code might use some old-style classes. The following works for both:

x.__class__.__name__

Do you want the name of the class as a string?

instance.__class__.__name__

type() ?

>>> class A:
...     def whoami(self):
...         print(type(self).__name__)
...
>>>
>>> class B(A):
...     pass
...
>>>
>>>
>>> o = B()
>>> o.whoami()
'B'
>>>

class A:
  pass

a = A()
str(a.__class__)

The sample code above (when input in the interactive interpreter) will produce '__main__.A' as opposed to 'A' which is produced if the __name__ attribute is invoked. By simply passing the result of A.__class__ to the str constructor the parsing is handled for you. However, you could also use the following code if you want something more explicit.

"{0}.{1}".format(a.__class__.__module__,a.__class__.__name__)

This behavior can be preferable if you have classes with the same name defined in separate modules.

The sample code provided above was tested in Python 2.7.5.