Question

Sometimes, I find it hard to distinguish between a method and an attribute by it’s name without appending parentheses.

For example:
there’re keys() method and text attribute in xml.etree.ElementTree.Element class.

text:The text attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with the element.

keys():Returns the elements attribute names as a list.

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Is there some basic rules/conventions to make text an attribute, but keys() a method?

If I make text() a method, and keys an attribute. It still seems OK.

Answer 1

The only real distinction is that one is callable and one is not, so you can use the builtin function callable() with the actual object (not a string with the name of it) to determine whether or not it is callable.

In your case:

>>> from xml.etree import ElementTree
>>> elt = ElementTree.Element("")
>>> callable(elt.keys)
True
>>> callable(elt.text)
False