python dynamic class names

Question

I want to instantiate a class based on a string value but it's not working. The parser object below is a dict, in the example let's say we have one called foo and here parser['name'] is 'foo':

obj = parser['name']()
Fails, yielding TypeError: 'str' object is not callable. But, since I have:

class foo:
    def __init__(self():
        print 'Hello'
And if I do obj = foo() it works fine and creates the correct object. Also, calling obj = type(parser['name'])() doesn't work.

Can anyone tell me how to resolve this issue?

Answer 1

You can try the following code:

classmap = {
  'foo': foo
}

obj = classmap[parser['name']]()