I have a module with ~100 classes and I want to get the class whose name matches a string I am supplying.
I used inspect to generate the list of the classes and names, and iterate through that, but is there another way to do it?
What I have:
def get_class_by_name(input_name_string): for (key, cls) in inspect.getmembers(my_module, inspect.isclass): if key == input_name_string: return cls You can simply use getattr on the module :
import my_module getattr(my_module, class_name) You can use a dictionary for this and the string is always the key to the class.
Here a code:
class A: def __init__(self): self.name = "A" def print(self): print(self.name) class B: def __init__(self, name): self.name = name def print(self): print(self.name) def get_class_by_name(input_name_string, dict): return dict[input_name_string] if __name__ == '__main__': my_classes = {} my_classes["A"] = A() my_classes["B"] = B C = get_class_by_name("A", my_classes) C.print() D = get_class_by_name("B", my_classes)("Hallo") D.print() 
getattr(my_module, class_name)to retrieve whatever object has the name of the class you want? Which should be theclassobject..__subclasses__(). It would be helpful to give some context on what you're actually trying to achieve, though.vars(my_module)[class_name]would do as well.