Python: Essential Reference, Third Edition

Types and Class Membership Tests

When you create an instance of a class, the type of that instance is the class itself. To test for membership in a class, use the built-in function isinstance(obj,cname). This function returns True if an object, obj, belongs to the class cname or any class derived from cname. For example:

class A(object): pass
class B(A): pass
class C(object): pass

a = A()          # Instance of 'A'
b = B()          # Instance of 'B'
c = C()          # Instance of 'C'

type(a)          # Returns the class object A
isinstance(a,A)  # Returns True
isinstance(b,A)  # Returns True, B derives from A
isinstance(b,C)  # Returns False, C not derived from A

Similarly, the built-in function issubclass(A,B) returns True if the class A is a subclass of class B. For example:

issubclass(B,A) ...