31.9. pyclbr — Python class browser support

The pyclbr module can be used to determine some limited information about the classes, methods and top-level functions defined in a module. The information provided is sufficient to implement a traditional three-pane class browser. The information is extracted from the source code rather than by importing the module, so this module is safe to use with untrusted code. This restriction makes it impossible to use this module with modules not implemented in Python, including all standard and optional extension modules.

pyclbr.readmodule(module[, path=None])

Read a module and return a dictionary mapping class names to class descriptor objects. The parameter module should be the name of a module as a string; it may be the name of a module within a package. The path parameter should be a sequence, and is used to augment the value of sys.path, which is used to locate module source code.

pyclbr.readmodule_ex(module[, path=None])

Like readmodule(), but the returned dictionary, in addition to mapping class names to class descriptor objects, also maps top-level function names to function descriptor objects. Moreover, if the module being read is a package, the key '__path__' in the returned dictionary has as its value a list which contains the package search path.

31.9.1. Class Objects

The Class objects used as values in the dictionary returned by readmodule() and readmodule_ex() provide the following data members:

Class.module

The name of the module defining the class described by the class descriptor.

Class.name

The name of the class.

Class.super

A list of Class objects which describe the immediate base classes of the class being described. Classes which are named as superclasses but which are not discoverable by readmodule() are listed as a string with the class name instead of as Class objects.

Class.methods

A dictionary mapping method names to line numbers.

Class.file

Name of the file containing the class statement defining the class.

Class.lineno

The line number of the class statement within the file named by file.

31.9.2. Function Objects

The Function objects used as values in the dictionary returned by readmodule_ex() provide the following data members:

Function.module

The name of the module defining the function described by the function descriptor.

Function.name

The name of the function.

Function.file

Name of the file containing the def statement defining the function.

Function.lineno

The line number of the def statement within the file named by file.