Determine the type of an object?

Question

Is there a simple way to determine if a variable is a list, dictionary, or something else? I am getting an object back that may be either type and I need to be able to tell

Answer 1

In many practical cases instead of using type or isinstance you can also use @functools.singledispatch, which is used to define generic functions (function composed of multiple functions implementing the same operation for different types).

In other words, you would want to use it when you have a code like the following:

def do_something(arg):
    if isinstance(arg, int):
        ... # some code specific to processing integers
    if isinstance(arg, str):
        ... # some code specific to processing strings
    if isinstance(arg, list):
        ... # some code specific to processing lists
    ...  # etc

Here is a small example of how it works:

from functools import singledispatch


@singledispatch
def say_type(arg):
    raise NotImplementedError(f"I don't work with {type(arg)}")


@say_type.register
def _(arg: int):
    print(f"{arg} is an integer")


@say_type.register
def _(arg: bool):
    print(f"{arg} is a boolean")

>>> say_type(0)
0 is an integer
>>> say_type(False)
False is a boolean
>>> say_type(dict())
# long error traceback ending with:
NotImplementedError: I don't work with 

---

Additionaly we can use abstract classes to cover several types at once:

from collections.abc import Sequence


@say_type.register
def _(arg: Sequence):
    print(f"{arg} is a sequence!")

>>> say_type([0, 1, 2])
[0, 1, 2] is a sequence!
>>> say_type((1, 2, 3))
(1, 2, 3) is a sequence!