Question

Is there a way to call the method of a class from another class? I am looking for something like PHP’s call_user_func_array().
Here is what I want to happen:

class A:
    def method1(arg1, arg2):
        ...

class B:
    A.method1(1, 2)

Answer 1

update: Just saw the reference to call_user_func_array in your post. that’s different. use getattr to get the function object and then call it with your arguments

class A(object):
    def method1(self, a, b, c):
        # foo

method = A.method1

method is now an actual function object. that you can call directly (functions are first class objects in python just like in PHP > 5.3) . But the considerations from below still apply. That is, the above example will blow up unless you decorate A.method1 with one of the two decorators discussed below, pass it an instance of A as the first argument or access the method on an instance of A.

a = A()
method = a.method1
method(1, 2)

---

You have three options for doing this

1. Use an instance of A to call method1 (using two possible forms)
2. apply the classmethod decorator to method1: you will no longer be able to reference self in method1 but you will get passed a cls instance in it’s place which is A in this case.
3. apply the staticmethod decorator to method1: you will no longer be able to reference self, or cls in staticmethod1 but you can hardcode references to A into it, though obviously, these references will be inherited by all subclasses of A unless they specifically override method1 and do not call super.

Some examples:

class Test1(object): # always inherit from object in 2.x. it's called new-style classes. look it up
    def method1(self, a, b):
        return a + b

    @staticmethod
    def method2(a, b):
        return a + b

    @classmethod
    def method3(cls, a, b):
        return cls.method2(a, b)

t = Test1()  # same as doing it in another class

Test1.method1(t, 1, 2) #form one of calling a method on an instance
t.method1(1, 2)        # form two (the common one) essentially reduces to form one

Test1.method2(1, 2)  #the static method can be called with just arguments
t.method2(1, 2)      # on an instance or the class

Test1.method3(1, 2)  # ditto for the class method. It will have access to the class
t.method3(1, 2)      # that it's called on (the subclass if called on a subclass) 
                     # but will not have access to the instance it's called on 
                     # (if it is called on an instance)

Note that in the same way that the name of the self variable is entirely up to you, so is the name of the cls variable but those are the customary values.

Now that you know how to do it, I would seriously think about if you want to do it. Often times, methods that are meant to be called unbound (without an instance) are better left as module level functions in python.