Python method dir() does not return all attributes/methods

Question

I have this piece of code (from Dive in Python 3):

>>> import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
>>> tree = etree.parse("feed.xml")
>>> root = tree.getroot()
>>> print(dir(root))
['__class__', '__copy__', '__deepcopy__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getstate__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setstate__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'extend', 'find', 'findall', 'findtext', 'get', 'getchildren', 'getiterator', 'insert', 'items', 'iter', 'iterfind', 'itertext', 'keys', 'makeelement', 'remove', 'set']
>>>

Several attributes are missing from the list, notably "tag", "text", "attrib", etc.

Why is this? How can I reliably get the complete list of attributes and methods from an objects?

Thanks

Drewness · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-28 21:04:59Z

1

Attributes are actually defined as the arguments accepted by the getattr built-in function. As the user can reimplement __getattr__, suddenly allowing any kind of attribute, there is no possible generic way to generate that list. The dir function returns the keys in the __dict__ attribute, i.e. all the attributes accessible if the __getattr__ method is not reimplemented.

answered Feb 28, 2014 at 21:04

Drewness

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2 Comments

user1797036 Over a year ago

the "root" object does not have the dict attribute. Could it be that this is a native C implementation

Drewness Over a year ago

Each root element has an attribute .attrib, which is a dict. You could access it like so: print root.attrib. Docs

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