How to keep track of class instances?

One way to keep track of instances is with a class variable:

class A(object):
    instances = []

    def __init__(self, foo):
        self.foo = foo
        A.instances.append(self)

At the end of the program, you can create your dict like this:

foo_vars = {id(instance): instance.foo for instance in A.instances}

There is only one list:

>>> a = A(1)
>>> b = A(2)
>>> A.instances
[<__main__.A object at 0x1004d44d0>, <__main__.A object at 0x1004d4510>]
>>> id(A.instances)
4299683456
>>> id(a.instances)
4299683456    
>>> id(b.instances)
4299683456    

@JoelCornett's answer covers the basics perfectly. This is a slightly more complicated version, which might help with a few subtle issues.

If you want to be able to access all the "live" instances of a given class, subclass the following (or include equivalent code in your own base class):

from weakref import WeakSet

class base(object):
    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        instance = object.__new__(cls, *args, **kwargs)
        if "instances" not in cls.__dict__:
            cls.instances = WeakSet()
        cls.instances.add(instance)
        return instance

This addresses two possible issues with the simpler implementation that @JoelCornett presented:

1. Each subclass of base will keep track of its own instances separately. You won't get subclass instances in a parent class's instance list, and one subclass will never stumble over instances of a sibling subclass. This might be undesirable, depending on your use case, but it's probably easier to merge the sets back together than it is to split them apart.

2. The instances set uses weak references to the class's instances, so if you del or reassign all the other references to an instance elsewhere in your code, the bookkeeping code will not prevent it from being garbage collected. Again, this might not be desirable for some use cases, but it is easy enough to use regular sets (or lists) instead of a weakset if you really want every instance to last forever.

Some handy-dandy test output (with the instances sets always being passed to list only because they don't print out nicely):

>>> b = base()
>>> list(base.instances)
[<__main__.base object at 0x00000000026067F0>]
>>> class foo(base):
...     pass
... 
>>> f = foo()
>>> list(foo.instances)
[<__main__.foo object at 0x0000000002606898>]
>>> list(base.instances)
[<__main__.base object at 0x00000000026067F0>]
>>> del f
>>> list(foo.instances)
[]