Python typeerror: ‘str’ object is not callable Solution

ItsMyCode |

One of the most common errors in Python programming is typeerror: ‘str’ object is not callable , and sometimes it will be painful to debug or find why this issue appeared in the first place.

What is typeerror: ‘str’ object is not callable in Python?

Python has a built-in method str() which converts a specified value into a string. The str() method takes an object as an argument and converts it into a string.

Since str() is a predefined function and a built-in reserved keyword in Python, you cannot use it in declaring it as a variable name or a function name. If you do so, Python will throw a typeerror: ‘ str ‘ object is not callable.

Let us take a look at few scenarios where you could reproduce this error.

Scenario 1 – Declaring a variable name called “str”

The most common scenario and a mistake made by developers are declaring a variable named ‘ str ‘ and accessing it. Let’s look at a few examples of how to reproduce the ‘str’ object is not callable error.

str = "Hello, "
text = " Welcome to ItsMyCode"

print(str(str + text))

# Output
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\Projects\Tryouts\listindexerror.py", line 4, in <module>
    print(str(str + text))
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable

In this example, we have declared ‘ str ‘ as a variable, and we are also using the predefined str() method to concatenate the string.

str = "The cost of apple is "
x = 200
price= str(x)
print((str + price))

# output
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\Projects\Tryouts\listindexerror.py", line 3, in <module>
    price= str(x)
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable

The above code is similar to example 1, where we try to convert integer x into a string. Since str is declared as a variable and if you str() method to convert into a string, you will get object not callable error.

Solving typeerror: ‘str’ object is not callable in Python.

Now the solution for both the above examples is straightforward; instead of declaring a variable name like “ str ” and using it as a function, declare a more meaningful name as shown below and make sure that you don’t have “ str ” as a variable name in your code.

text1 = "Hello, "
text2 = " Welcome to ItsMyCode"

print(str(text1 + text2))

# Output
Hello, Welcome to ItsMyCode

text = "The cost of apple is "
x = 200
price= str(x)
print((text + price))

# Output
The cost of apple is 200

Scenario 2 – String Formatting Using %

Another hard-to-spot error that you can come across is missing the *% * character in an attempt to append values during string formatting.

If you look at the below code, we have forgotten the string formatting % to separate our string and the values we want to concatenate into our final string.

print("Hello %s its %s day"("World","a beautiful"))

# Output 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\Projects\Tryouts\listindexerror.py", line 1, in <module>
    print("Hello %s its %s day"("World","a beautiful"))
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable


print("Hello %s its %s day"%("World","a beautiful"))

# Output
Hello World its a beautiful day