Checking if an Object is an Instance of a Class
How can you determine if a particular object is an instance of a specific class?
You can easily verify this in Python using the built-in isinstance()
function.
How to Use isinstance()
The isinstance()
function is used as follows:
isinstance(object, class)
This function returns a value based on the following conditions:
-
It returns
True
if the object is an instance of the specified class, or an instance of a subclass that inherits from the specified class. -
It returns
False
otherwise.
Examples of Using isinstance()
Below is an example of checking if my_dog
, an instance of the Dog
class, is an instance of various classes:
class Animal: pass class Fish: pass class Dog(Animal): pass my_dog = Dog() print(isinstance(my_dog, Dog)) # True print(isinstance(my_dog, Animal)) # True print(isinstance(my_dog, Fish)) # False print(isinstance(my_dog, object)) # True print(isinstance(my_dog, int)) # False
In the code above, the my_dog
object is an instance of the Dog
class, so isinstance(my_dog, Dog)
returns True
.
Additionally, since the Dog
class inherits from the Animal
class, isinstance(my_dog, Animal)
also returns True
.
However, my_dog
is not an instance of the Fish
class, so isinstance(my_dog, Fish)
returns False
.
Lastly, since the object
class is the parent class of all classes, isinstance(my_dog, object)
returns True
.
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