logging - Logging facility for Python

(examples taken from LibRef)

Simple logging:

LOG_FILENAME = '/tmp/logging_example.out'
logging.basicConfig(filename=LOG_FILENAME,level=logging.DEBUG,)

logging.debug('This message should go to the log file')

Will result in:

DEBUG:root:This message should go to the log file

Usually you want to avoid growing the log file indefinitely. logging module provides a way to rotate files in several ways:

import logging
import logging.handlers

LOG_FILENAME = '/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out'

# Set up a specific logger with our desired output level
my_logger = logging.getLogger('MyLogger')
my_logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Add the log message handler to the logger
handler = logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(
              LOG_FILENAME, maxBytes=20, backupCount=5)

my_logger.addHandler(handler)

# Log some messages
for i in range(20):
    my_logger.debug('i = %d' % i)

This will create 6 files:

/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out
/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out.1
/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out.2
/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out.3
/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out.4
/tmp/logging_rotatingfile_example.out.5

Using debug levels you can set which messages you wish you see:

import sys

LEVELS = {'debug': logging.DEBUG,
          'info': logging.INFO,
          'warning': logging.WARNING,
          'error': logging.ERROR,
          'critical': logging.CRITICAL}

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    level_name = sys.argv[1]
    level = LEVELS.get(level_name, logging.NOTSET)
    logging.basicConfig(level=level)

logging.debug('This is a debug message')
logging.info('This is an info message')
logging.warning('This is a warning message')
logging.error('This is an error message')
logging.critical('This is a critical error message')

Run the script with an argument like ‘debug’ or ‘warning’ to see which messages show up at different levels:

$ python logging_level_example.py debug
DEBUG:root:This is a debug message
INFO:root:This is an info message
WARNING:root:This is a warning message
ERROR:root:This is an error message
CRITICAL:root:This is a critical error message

$ python logging_level_example.py info
INFO:root:This is an info message
WARNING:root:This is a warning message
ERROR:root:This is an error message
CRITICAL:root:This is a critical error message

Here’s how you can trace the source of logging messages:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARNING)

logger1 = logging.getLogger('package1.module1')
logger2 = logging.getLogger('package2.module2')

logger1.warning('This message comes from one module')
logger2.warning('And this message comes from another module')

And the output:

$ python logging_modules_example.py
WARNING:package1.module1:This message comes from one module
WARNING:package2.module2:And this message comes from another module

The following example shows how to set up logging to format messages in a different way:

# create logger
logger = logging.getLogger("simple_example")
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create console handler and set level to debug
ch = logging.StreamHandler()
ch.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create formatter
formatter = logging.Formatter(
    "%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s")
# add formatter to ch
ch.setFormatter(formatter)
# add ch to logger
logger.addHandler(ch)

# "application" code
logger.debug("debug message")
logger.info("info message")
logger.warn("warn message")
logger.error("error message")
logger.critical("critical message")

Running this module from the command line produces the following output:

$ python simple_logging_module.py
2005-03-19 15:10:26,618 - simple_example - DEBUG - debug message
2005-03-19 15:10:26,620 - simple_example - INFO - info message
2005-03-19 15:10:26,695 - simple_example - WARNING - warn message
2005-03-19 15:10:26,697 - simple_example - ERROR - error message
2005-03-19 15:10:26,773 - simple_example - CRITICAL - critical message

The default date format string is:

%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

Format strings you can use:

Format	Description
%(name)s	Name of the logger (logging channel).
%(levelno)s	Numeric logging level for the message (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL).
%(levelname)s	Text logging level for the message ('DEBUG', 'INFO', 'WARNING', 'ERROR', 'CRITICAL').
%(pathname)s	Full pathname of the source file where the logging call was issued (if available).
%(filename)s	Filename portion of pathname.
%(module)s	Module (name portion of filename).
%(funcName)s	Name of function containing the logging call.
%(lineno)d	Source line number where the logging call was issued (if available).
%(created)f	Time when the LogRecord was created (as returned by time.time()).
%(relativeCreated)d	Time in milliseconds when the LogRecord was created, relative to the time the logging module was loaded.
%(asctime)s	Human-readable time when the LogRecord was created. By default this is of the form “2003-07-08 16:49:45,896” (the numbers after the comma are millisecond portion of the time).
%(msecs)d	Millisecond portion of the time when the LogRecord was created.
%(thread)d	Thread ID (if available).
%(threadName)s	Thread name (if available).
%(process)d	Process ID (if available).
%(message)s	The logged message, computed as msg % args.

Note

LibRef’s logging docs have many additional examples for creation of custom logging classes.