Python dictionary from an object's fields

Do you know if there is a built-in function to build a dictionary from an arbitrary object? I'd like to do something like this:

>>> class Foo:
...     bar = 'hello'
...     baz = 'world'
...
>>> f = Foo()
>>> props(f)
{ 'bar' : 'hello', 'baz' : 'world' }

NOTE: It should not include methods. Only fields.

Note that best practice in Python 2.7 is to use new-style classes (not needed with Python 3), i.e.

class Foo(object):
   ...

Also, there's a difference between an 'object' and a 'class'. To build a dictionary from an arbitrary object, it's sufficient to use __dict__. Usually, you'll declare your methods at class level and your attributes at instance level, so __dict__ should be fine. For example:

>>> class A(object):
...   def __init__(self):
...     self.b = 1
...     self.c = 2
...   def do_nothing(self):
...     pass
...
>>> a = A()
>>> a.__dict__
{'c': 2, 'b': 1}

A better approach (suggested by robert in comments) is the builtin vars function:

>>> vars(a)
{'c': 2, 'b': 1}

Alternatively, depending on what you want to do, it might be nice to inherit from dict. Then your class is already a dictionary, and if you want you can override getattr and/or setattr to call through and set the dict. For example:

class Foo(dict):
    def __init__(self):
        pass
    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        return self[attr]

    # etc...

Instead of x.__dict__, it's actually more pythonic to use vars(x).

The dir builtin will give you all the object's attributes, including special methods like __str__, __dict__ and a whole bunch of others which you probably don't want. But you can do something like:

>>> class Foo(object):
...     bar = 'hello'
...     baz = 'world'
...
>>> f = Foo()
>>> [name for name in dir(f) if not name.startswith('__')]
[ 'bar', 'baz' ]
>>> dict((name, getattr(f, name)) for name in dir(f) if not name.startswith('__')) 
{ 'bar': 'hello', 'baz': 'world' }

So can extend this to only return data attributes and not methods, by defining your props function like this:

import inspect

def props(obj):
    pr = {}
    for name in dir(obj):
        value = getattr(obj, name)
        if not name.startswith('__') and not inspect.ismethod(value):
            pr[name] = value
    return pr

I've settled with a combination of both answers:

dict((key, value) for key, value in f.__dict__.iteritems() 
    if not callable(value) and not key.startswith('__'))

I thought I'd take some time to show you how you can translate an object to dict via dict(obj).

class A(object):
    d = '4'
    e = '5'
    f = '6'

    def __init__(self):
        self.a = '1'
        self.b = '2'
        self.c = '3'

    def __iter__(self):
        # first start by grabbing the Class items
        iters = dict((x,y) for x,y in A.__dict__.items() if x[:2] != '__')

        # then update the class items with the instance items
        iters.update(self.__dict__)

        # now 'yield' through the items
        for x,y in iters.items():
            yield x,y

a = A()
print(dict(a)) 
# prints "{'a': '1', 'c': '3', 'b': '2', 'e': '5', 'd': '4', 'f': '6'}"

The key section of this code is the __iter__ function.

As the comments explain, the first thing we do is grab the Class items and prevent anything that starts with '__'.

Once you've created that dict, then you can use the update dict function and pass in the instance __dict__.

These will give you a complete class+instance dictionary of members. Now all that's left is to iterate over them and yield the returns.

Also, if you plan on using this a lot, you can create an @iterable class decorator.

def iterable(cls):
    def iterfn(self):
        iters = dict((x,y) for x,y in cls.__dict__.items() if x[:2] != '__')
        iters.update(self.__dict__)

        for x,y in iters.items():
            yield x,y

    cls.__iter__ = iterfn
    return cls

@iterable
class B(object):
    d = 'd'
    e = 'e'
    f = 'f'

    def __init__(self):
        self.a = 'a'
        self.b = 'b'
        self.c = 'c'

b = B()
print(dict(b))