Question

To get a string representation of a class name we can use obj.__class__.__name__ is it possible to overload these methods so that I can return my string instead of the actual class name?

Answer 1

Let’s try! (Yes, this works):

>>> class Foo(object):
...     pass
...
>>> obj = Foo()
>>> obj.__class__.__name__ = 'Bar'
>>> obj
<__main__.Bar object at 0x7fae8ba3af90>
>>> obj.__class__
<class '__main__.Bar'>

You could also have just done Foo.__name__ = 'Bar', I used obj.__class__.__name__ to be consistent with your question.