How to Get type of an object in Python
Introduction
Data types are an integral part of any programming as They are very helpful in almost every line of code, be it defining functions, variables or accessing attributes etc. and therefore it is becoming important for us to learn the methods by which we can check the data type of an object in python.
We can use two methods to get the type of an object in Python.
Method 1: Using type() method
type() is the most flexible and standard method that can be used in order to obtain the type of any object in Python.
Let’s go through an example to understand it further
a = 13.0
b = "Python Shiksha"
c = {
"1" : "One",
"2" : "Two",
"3" : "Three"
}
print(type(a))
print(type(b))
print(type(c))
"""
OUTPUT:
<class 'float'>
<class 'str'>
<class 'dict'>
"""
As expected, we were able to get the desired output, and we obtained the respective classes of the user defined variables.
Method 2: Using isinstance() method
isinstance() is another pre defined method in python which can be used to get the type of the object.
But how it’s different from type() then, The fact being type() takes only one parameter while isinstance() takes two parameters.
First parameter being the object we want to get the type of, and the second being the group of classes we want to check in.
Suppose we are passing an object and mostly you predict it to be a string, then you can pass str as a second parameter and the method would return True or False accordingly.
Let’s have a clear example of this method’s implementation
print(isinstance(13.0,float))
print(isinstance("Python Shiksha",(str,list,tuple)))
print(isinstance([2,4,6,8],(dict,str,int)))
"""
Output:
True
True
False
"""
As discussed above, we got Boolean values according to the comparison made by the isinstance() method.
The good thing about this method is that, you can check for the preferred data type among a group of data types as well as per each data type.
Conclusion
As we conclude this article, we got to know about the two methods that can be used to extract the type of an object in Python.
I am Dibyanshu Mohanty, Undergraduate Engineering Student at VIT, Vellore with a keen interest in Web and App Development