How to use dir method in Python

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This post explains how to use Python's builtin dir() method. dir() is a very useful method as it provides all properties and methods of the specified object.

`dir` syntax

   
dir(object)

Let's understand dir with below code snippet.

   
import json

print(dir(json))

Output

   
['JSONDecodeError', 'JSONDecoder', 'JSONEncoder', '__all__', '__author__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__', '__version__', '_default_decoder', '_default_encoder', 
'codecs', 'decoder', 'detect_encoding', 'dump', 'dumps', 'encoder', 'load', 'loads', 'scanner']

From the above output you can see dir method provided all the attributes and methods from the json module.

Now if you want to get more details around any of these methods you can get that information using help() method as shown in below example.

   
import json

print(help(json.loads))

Output

   
Help on function loads in module json:

loads(s, *, cls=None, object_hook=None, parse_float=None, parse_int=None, parse_constant=None, object_pairs_hook=None, **kw)
    Deserialize ``s`` (a ``str``, ``bytes`` or ``bytearray`` instance
    containing a JSON document) to a Python object.

    ``object_hook`` is an optional function that will be called with the
    result of any object literal decode (a ``dict``). The return value of
    ``object_hook`` will be used instead of the ``dict``. This feature
    can be used to implement custom decoders (e.g. JSON-RPC class hinting).

    ``object_pairs_hook`` is an optional function that will be called with the
    result of any object literal decoded with an ordered list of pairs.  The
    return value of ``object_pairs_hook`` will be used instead of the ``dict``.
    This feature can be used to implement custom decoders.  If ``object_hook``
    is also defined, the ``object_pairs_hook`` takes priority.

    ``parse_float``, if specified, will be called with the string

Category: Python