How to "uninstantiate" an object?

Question

I wrote a function in Python:

def instantiate(c):
    if inspect.isclass(c): return c()
    elif isinstance(c, object): return c
    else: raise Exception, '%s is not an object or class.' % c

Now I want to do the opposite: get the class from an already instantiated object so that I can re-instantiate it with different parameters. How can I do that?

---

Tests:

>>> f = Form()
>>> type(f)()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: instance() takes at least 1 argument (0 given)
>>> f.__class__()
<forms.Form instance at 0xb7f4d5cc>

More tests:

>>> o = object()
>>> type(o)()
<object object at 0xb7f78478>
>>> o.__class__()
<object object at 0xb7f78480>

Seems to work for object but not my Form class:

class Form:
    def __init__(self, data={}, prefix='', action='', id=None):

I'm guessing this has something to do with self but I don't know what.

Answer 1

To get the class of x

x.__class__

Answer 2

The class of object c is type(c).