Question

I define a python xmlrpc server as follows (approximate example for the purpose of explaining things only):

from SimpleXMLRPCServer import SimpleXMLRPCServer
server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(('localhost', 8000))
server.register_function(foo, "serial.send")
server.serve_forever()

Then I can use a xmlrpc client like the following

import xmlrpclib
device = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/RPC2")
device.serial.send(...)

Here I can check if device is an instance of xmlrpclib.ServerProxy with

isinstance(device, xmlrpclib.ServerProxy)

but what is device.serial? I want to check that device.serial belongs to an xmlrpc, and not, for instance, to serial, socket or something else.

Here is a concrete example of what I want to check:

def foo(x):
   if isinstance(x, ...):
       print("xmlrpc access")
   else:
       print("direct access")

foo(device.serial) # expected output: 'xmlrpc access'
foo(serial.Serial(..)) # expected output: 'direct access'
foo(socket.Socket(...)) # expected outcome: 'direct access'

Answer 1

If you are asking for arbitrary inspection of Python objects then use the ‘inspect’
module of Python:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-pyint/index.html

also checking

>> obj.__class__

or

>> obj.__class__.__bases__

gives you access to the base classes.