Get class that defined method

Solution 1:

import inspect

def get_class_that_defined_method(meth):
    for cls in inspect.getmro(meth.im_class):
        if meth.__name__ in cls.__dict__: 
            return cls
    return None

Solution 2:

Thanks Sr2222 for pointing out I was missing the point...

Here's the corrected approach which is just like Alex's but does not require to import anything. I don't think it's an improvement though, unless there's a huge hierarchy of inherited classes as this approach stops as soon as the defining class is found, instead of returning the whole inheritance as getmro does. As said, this is a very unlikely scenario.

def get_class_that_defined_method(method):
    method_name = method.__name__
    if method.__self__:    
        classes = [method.__self__.__class__]
    else:
        #unbound method
        classes = [method.im_class]
    while classes:
        c = classes.pop()
        if method_name in c.__dict__:
            return c
        else:
            classes = list(c.__bases__) + classes
    return None

And the Example:

>>> class A(object):
...     def test(self): pass
>>> class B(A): pass
>>> class C(B): pass
>>> class D(A):
...     def test(self): print 1
>>> class E(D,C): pass

>>> get_class_that_defined_method(A().test)
<class '__main__.A'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(A.test)
<class '__main__.A'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(B.test)
<class '__main__.A'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(C.test)
<class '__main__.A'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(D.test)
<class '__main__.D'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(E().test)
<class '__main__.D'>
>>> get_class_that_defined_method(E.test)
<class '__main__.D'>
>>> E().test()
1

Alex solution returns the same results. As long as Alex approach can be used, I would use it instead of this one.

Solution 3:

I don't know why no one has ever brought this up or why the top answer has 50 upvotes when it is slow as hell, but you can also do the following:

def get_class_that_defined_method(meth):
    return meth.im_class.__name__

For python 3 I believe this changed and you'll need to look into .__qualname__.

Solution 4:

In Python 3, if you need the actual class object you can do:

import sys
f = Foo.my_function
vars(sys.modules[f.__module__])[f.__qualname__.split('.')[0]]  # Gets Foo object

If the function could belong to a nested class you would need to iterate as follows:

f = Foo.Bar.my_function
vals = vars(sys.modules[f.__module__])
for attr in f.__qualname__.split('.')[:-1]:
    vals = vals[attr]
# vals is now the class Foo.Bar