How to check whether a variable is a class or not?

Even better: use the inspect.isclass function.

>>> import inspect
>>> class X(object):
...     pass
... 
>>> inspect.isclass(X)
True

>>> x = X()
>>> isinstance(x, X)
True
>>> y = 25
>>> isinstance(y, X)
False

The inspect.isclass is probably the best solution, and it's really easy to see how it's actually implemented

def isclass(object):
    """Return true if the object is a class.

    Class objects provide these attributes:
        __doc__         documentation string
        __module__      name of module in which this class was defined"""
    return isinstance(object, (type, types.ClassType))

>>> class X(object):
...     pass
... 
>>> type(X)
<type 'type'>
>>> isinstance(X,type)
True