How to get (sub)class name from a static method in Python?

Question

If I define:

class Bar(object):

    @staticmethod
    def bar():
        # code
        pass

class Foo(Bar):
    # code
    pass

Is it possible for a function call Foo.bar() to determine the class name Foo?

Answer 1

Replace the staticmethod with a classmethod. This will be passed the class when it is called, so you can get the class name from that.

class Bar(object):

    @classmethod
    def bar(cls):
        # code
        print cls.__name__

class Foo(Bar):
    # code
    pass

>>> Bar.bar()
Bar

>>> Foo.bar()
Foo

Answer 2

If you need to find the class information, the appropriate way is to use @classmethod.

class Bar(object):
    @classmethod
    def bar(cls):
        # code
        print(cls.__name__)

class Foo(Bar):
    # code
    pass

Now your bar method has a reference to the class as cls which is the actual class of the caller. And as shown in the code, cls.__name__ is the name of the class you are looking for.

>>> Foo.bar()
Foo
>>> Bar.bar()
Bar