8.9.1. Dynamic Type Creation

types.new_class(name, bases=(), kwds=None, exec_body=None)

Creates a class object dynamically using the appropriate metaclass.

The first three arguments are the components that make up a class definition header: the class name, the base classes (in order), the keyword arguments (such as metaclass).

The exec_body argument is a callback that is used to populate the freshly created class namespace. It should accept the class namespace as its sole argument and update the namespace directly with the class contents. If no callback is provided, it has the same effect as passing in lambda ns: ns.

New in version 3.3.

types.prepare_class(name, bases=(), kwds=None)

Calculates the appropriate metaclass and creates the class namespace.

The arguments are the components that make up a class definition header: the class name, the base classes (in order) and the keyword arguments (such as metaclass).

The return value is a 3-tuple: metaclass, namespace, kwds

metaclass is the appropriate metaclass, namespace is the prepared class namespace and kwds is an updated copy of the passed in kwds argument with any 'metaclass' entry removed. If no kwds argument is passed in, this will be an empty dict.

New in version 3.3.

8.9.2. Standard Interpreter Types

This module provides names for many of the types that are required to implement a Python interpreter. It deliberately avoids including some of the types that arise only incidentally during processing such as the listiterator type.

Typical use of these names is for isinstance() or issubclass() checks.

Standard names are defined for the following types:

types.FunctionType

types.LambdaType

The type of user-defined functions and functions created by lambda expressions.

types.GeneratorType

The type of generator-iterator objects, produced by calling a generator function.

types.CodeType

The type for code objects such as returned by compile().

types.MethodType

The type of methods of user-defined class instances.

types.BuiltinFunctionType

types.BuiltinMethodType

The type of built-in functions like len() or sys.exit(), and methods of built-in classes. (Here, the term “built-in” means “written in C”.)

types.ModuleType

The type of modules.

types.TracebackType

The type of traceback objects such as found in sys.exc_info()[2].

types.FrameType

The type of frame objects such as found in tb.tb_frame if tb is a traceback object.

types.GetSetDescriptorType

The type of objects defined in extension modules with PyGetSetDef, such as FrameType.f_locals or array.array.typecode. This type is used as descriptor for object attributes; it has the same purpose as the property type, but for classes defined in extension modules.

types.MemberDescriptorType

The type of objects defined in extension modules with PyMemberDef, such as datetime.timedelta.days. This type is used as descriptor for simple C data members which use standard conversion functions; it has the same purpose as the property type, but for classes defined in extension modules.

CPython implementation detail: In other implementations of Python, this type may be identical to GetSetDescriptorType.

class types.MappingProxyType(mapping)

Read-only proxy of a mapping. It provides a dynamic view on the mapping’s entries, which means that when the mapping changes, the view reflects these changes.

New in version 3.3.

key in proxy

Return True if the underlying mapping has a key key, else False.

proxy[key]

Return the item of the underlying mapping with key key. Raises a KeyError if key is not in the underlying mapping.

iter(proxy)

Return an iterator over the keys of the underlying mapping. This is a shortcut for iter(proxy.keys()).

len(proxy)

Return the number of items in the underlying mapping.

copy()

Return a shallow copy of the underlying mapping.

get(key[, default])

Return the value for key if key is in the underlying mapping, else default. If default is not given, it defaults to None, so that this method never raises a KeyError.

items()

Return a new view of the underlying mapping’s items ((key, value) pairs).

keys()

Return a new view of the underlying mapping’s keys.

values()

Return a new view of the underlying mapping’s values.

class types.SimpleNamespace

A simple object subclass that provides attribute access to its namespace, as well as a meaningful repr.

Unlike object, with SimpleNamespace you can add and remove attributes. If a SimpleNamespace object is initialized with keyword arguments, those are directly added to the underlying namespace.

The type is roughly equivalent to the following code:

class SimpleNamespace:
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        self.__dict__.update(kwargs)
    def __repr__(self):
        keys = sorted(self.__dict__)
        items = ("{}={!r}".format(k, self.__dict__[k]) for k in keys)
        return "{}({})".format(type(self).__name__, ", ".join(items))

SimpleNamespace may be useful as a replacement for class NS: pass. However, for a structured record type use namedtuple() instead.

New in version 3.3.