'Return the state of a container.
If the container is not found the state returned is "absent"
:returns: state of a container as a lower case string.
:rtype: ``str``'

def _get_state(self):

    if self._container_exists(container_name=self.container_name, lxc_path=self.lxc_path):
        return str(self.container.state).lower()
    else:
        return str('absent')
