Creating instances of class based on string name of class

Question

Is there a way to use a string (in my case read from a file) to find a class with the name matching the string, then create an instance of that class. For example:

class FirstClass:
    def __init__(self, arg1):
        self.arg = arg1

values = ','.split('FirstClass', 'argument')
# need the magic for this:
values[0](*values[1:])

But of course using values[0] doesn't work there, because it's a string, not a class. Is there a way to automatically convert the string to the class there? Especially if I have many classes and cannot know in advance which one to instantiate, like reading the values from a CSV and wanting the right class to handle a line.

Parker Hoyes · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-27 02:13:26Z

4

You can access a variable by name using locals() or globals() respectively. In your case this would work as such:

locals()[values[0]](*values[1:])

answered May 27, 2015 at 2:13

Parker Hoyes

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1 Comment

Peter Gibson Over a year ago

You probably want globals() though so that it works within a function scope. Also see this answer for if the class is part of another module you want to dynamically load stackoverflow.com/questions/452969/…

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