15.7.1.1. Simple examples

Most applications are probably going to want to log to a file, so let’s start with that case. Using the basicConfig() function, we can set up the default handler so that debug messages are written to a file (in the example, we assume that you have the appropriate permissions to create a file called example.log in the current directory):

import logging
LOG_FILENAME = 'example.log'
logging.basicConfig(filename=LOG_FILENAME,level=logging.DEBUG)

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

And now if we open the file and look at what we have, we should find the log message:

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

If you run the script repeatedly, the additional log messages are appended to the file. To create a new file each time, you can pass a filemode argument to basicConfig() with a value of 'w'. Rather than managing the file size yourself, though, it is simpler to use a RotatingFileHandler:

import glob
import logging
import logging.handlers

LOG_FILENAME = '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)

# See what files are created
logfiles = glob.glob('%s*' % LOG_FILENAME)

for filename in logfiles:
    print filename

The result should be 6 separate files, each with part of the log history for the application:

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

The most current file is always logging_rotatingfile_example.out, and each time it reaches the size limit it is renamed with the suffix .1. Each of the existing backup files is renamed to increment the suffix (.1 becomes .2, etc.) and the .6 file is erased.

Obviously this example sets the log length much much too small as an extreme example. You would want to set maxBytes to an appropriate value.

Another useful feature of the logging API is the ability to produce different messages at different log levels. This allows you to instrument your code with debug messages, for example, but turning the log level down so that those debug messages are not written for your production system. The default levels are NOTSET, DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR and CRITICAL.

The logger, handler, and log message call each specify a level. The log message is only emitted if the handler and logger are configured to emit messages of that level or lower. For example, if a message is CRITICAL, and the logger is set to ERROR, the message is emitted. If a message is a WARNING, and the logger is set to produce only ERRORs, the message is not emitted:

import logging
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

You will notice that these log messages all have root embedded in them. The logging module supports a hierarchy of loggers with different names. An easy way to tell where a specific log message comes from is to use a separate logger object for each of your modules. Each new logger “inherits” the configuration of its parent, and log messages sent to a logger include the name of that logger. Optionally, each logger can be configured differently, so that messages from different modules are handled in different ways. Let’s look at a simple example of how to log from different modules so it is easy to trace the source of the message:

import logging

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

There are many more options for configuring logging, including different log message formatting options, having messages delivered to multiple destinations, and changing the configuration of a long-running application on the fly using a socket interface. All of these options are covered in depth in the library module documentation.

15.7.1.2. Loggers

The logging library takes a modular approach and offers the several categories of components: loggers, handlers, filters, and formatters. Loggers expose the interface that application code directly uses. Handlers send the log records to the appropriate destination. Filters provide a finer grained facility for determining which log records to send on to a handler. Formatters specify the layout of the resultant log record.

Logger objects have a threefold job. First, they expose several methods to application code so that applications can log messages at runtime. Second, logger objects determine which log messages to act upon based upon severity (the default filtering facility) or filter objects. Third, logger objects pass along relevant log messages to all interested log handlers.

The most widely used methods on logger objects fall into two categories: configuration and message sending.

• Logger.setLevel() specifies the lowest-severity log message a logger will handle, where debug is the lowest built-in severity level and critical is the highest built-in severity. For example, if the severity level is info, the logger will handle only info, warning, error, and critical messages and will ignore debug messages.
• Logger.addFilter() and Logger.removeFilter() add and remove filter objects from the logger object. This tutorial does not address filters.

With the logger object configured, the following methods create log messages:

• Logger.debug(), Logger.info(), Logger.warning(), Logger.error(), and Logger.critical() all create log records with a message and a level that corresponds to their respective method names. The message is actually a format string, which may contain the standard string substitution syntax of %s, %d, %f, and so on. The rest of their arguments is a list of objects that correspond with the substitution fields in the message. With regard to **kwargs, the logging methods care only about a keyword of exc_info and use it to determine whether to log exception information.
• Logger.exception() creates a log message similar to Logger.error(). The difference is that Logger.exception() dumps a stack trace along with it. Call this method only from an exception handler.
• Logger.log() takes a log level as an explicit argument. This is a little more verbose for logging messages than using the log level convenience methods listed above, but this is how to log at custom log levels.

getLogger() returns a reference to a logger instance with the specified if it is provided, or root if not. The names are period-separated hierarchical structures. Multiple calls to getLogger() with the same name will return a reference to the same logger object. Loggers that are further down in the hierarchical list are children of loggers higher up in the list. For example, given a logger with a name of foo, loggers with names of foo.bar, foo.bar.baz, and foo.bam are all descendants of foo. Child loggers propagate messages up to the handlers associated with their ancestor loggers. Because of this, it is unnecessary to define and configure handlers for all the loggers an application uses. It is sufficient to configure handlers for a top-level logger and create child loggers as needed.

15.7.1.3. Handlers

Handler objects are responsible for dispatching the appropriate log messages (based on the log messages’ severity) to the handler’s specified destination. Logger objects can add zero or more handler objects to themselves with an addHandler() method. As an example scenario, an application may want to send all log messages to a log file, all log messages of error or higher to stdout, and all messages of critical to an email address. This scenario requires three individual handlers where each handler is responsible for sending messages of a specific severity to a specific location.

The standard library includes quite a few handler types; this tutorial uses only StreamHandler and FileHandler in its examples.

There are very few methods in a handler for application developers to concern themselves with. The only handler methods that seem relevant for application developers who are using the built-in handler objects (that is, not creating custom handlers) are the following configuration methods:

• The Handler.setLevel() method, just as in logger objects, specifies the lowest severity that will be dispatched to the appropriate destination. Why are there two setLevel() methods? The level set in the logger determines which severity of messages it will pass to its handlers. The level set in each handler determines which messages that handler will send on.
• setFormatter() selects a Formatter object for this handler to use.
• addFilter() and removeFilter() respectively configure and deconfigure filter objects on handlers.

Application code should not directly instantiate and use instances of Handler. Instead, the Handler class is a base class that defines the interface that all handlers should have and establishes some default behavior that child classes can use (or override).

15.7.1.4. Formatters

Formatter objects configure the final order, structure, and contents of the log message. Unlike the base logging.Handler class, application code may instantiate formatter classes, although you could likely subclass the formatter if your application needs special behavior. The constructor takes two optional arguments: a message format string and a date format string. If there is no message format string, the default is to use the raw message. If there is no date format string, the default date format is:

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

with the milliseconds tacked on at the end.

The message format string uses %(<dictionary key>)s styled string substitution; the possible keys are documented in Formatter Objects.

The following message format string will log the time in a human-readable format, the severity of the message, and the contents of the message, in that order:

"%(asctime)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s"

15.7.1.5. Configuring Logging

Programmers can configure logging in three ways:

1. Creating loggers, handlers, and formatters explicitly using Python code that calls the configuration methods listed above.
2. Creating a logging config file and reading it using the fileConfig() function.
3. Creating a dictionary of configuration information and passing it to the dictConfig() function.

The following example configures a very simple logger, a console handler, and a simple formatter using Python code:

import logging

# 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 following Python module creates a logger, handler, and formatter nearly identical to those in the example listed above, with the only difference being the names of the objects:

import logging
import logging.config

logging.config.fileConfig("logging.conf")

# create logger
logger = logging.getLogger("simpleExample")

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

Here is the logging.conf file:

[loggers]
keys=root,simpleExample

[handlers]
keys=consoleHandler

[formatters]
keys=simpleFormatter

[logger_root]
level=DEBUG
handlers=consoleHandler

[logger_simpleExample]
level=DEBUG
handlers=consoleHandler
qualname=simpleExample
propagate=0

[handler_consoleHandler]
class=StreamHandler
level=DEBUG
formatter=simpleFormatter
args=(sys.stdout,)

[formatter_simpleFormatter]
format=%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s
datefmt=

The output is nearly identical to that of the non-config-file-based example:

$ python simple_logging_config.py
2005-03-19 15:38:55,977 - simpleExample - DEBUG - debug message
2005-03-19 15:38:55,979 - simpleExample - INFO - info message
2005-03-19 15:38:56,054 - simpleExample - WARNING - warn message
2005-03-19 15:38:56,055 - simpleExample - ERROR - error message
2005-03-19 15:38:56,130 - simpleExample - CRITICAL - critical message

You can see that the config file approach has a few advantages over the Python code approach, mainly separation of configuration and code and the ability of noncoders to easily modify the logging properties.

Note that the class names referenced in config files need to be either relative to the logging module, or absolute values which can be resolved using normal import mechanisms. Thus, you could use either handlers.WatchedFileHandler (relative to the logging module) or mypackage.mymodule.MyHandler (for a class defined in package mypackage and module mymodule, where mypackage is available on the Python import path).

Changed in version 2.7.

In Python 2.7, a new means of configuring logging has been introduced, using dictionaries to hold configuration information. This provides a superset of the functionality of the config-file-based approach outlined above, and is the recommended configuration method for new applications and deployments. Because a Python dictionary is used to hold configuration information, and since you can populate that dictionary using different means, you have more options for configuration. For example, you can use a configuration file in JSON format, or, if you have access to YAML processing functionality, a file in YAML format, to populate the configuration dictionary. Or, of course, you can construct the dictionary in Python code, receive it in pickled form over a socket, or use whatever approach makes sense for your application.

Here’s an example of the same configuration as above, in YAML format for the new dictionary-based approach:

version: 1
formatters:
  simple:
    format: format=%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s
handlers:
  console:
    class: logging.StreamHandler
    level: DEBUG
    formatter: simple
    stream: ext://sys.stdout
loggers:
  simpleExample:
    level: DEBUG
    handlers: [console]
    propagate: no
root:
    level: DEBUG
    handlers: [console]

For more information about logging using a dictionary, see Configuration functions.

15.7.1.6. Configuring Logging for a Library

When developing a library which uses logging, some consideration needs to be given to its configuration. If the using application does not use logging, and library code makes logging calls, then a one-off message “No handlers could be found for logger X.Y.Z” is printed to the console. This message is intended to catch mistakes in logging configuration, but will confuse an application developer who is not aware of logging by the library.

In addition to documenting how a library uses logging, a good way to configure library logging so that it does not cause a spurious message is to add a handler which does nothing. This avoids the message being printed, since a handler will be found: it just doesn’t produce any output. If the library user configures logging for application use, presumably that configuration will add some handlers, and if levels are suitably configured then logging calls made in library code will send output to those handlers, as normal.

A do-nothing handler can be simply defined as follows:

import logging

class NullHandler(logging.Handler):
    def emit(self, record):
        pass

An instance of this handler should be added to the top-level logger of the logging namespace used by the library. If all logging by a library foo is done using loggers with names matching “foo.x.y”, then the code:

import logging

h = NullHandler()
logging.getLogger("foo").addHandler(h)

should have the desired effect. If an organisation produces a number of libraries, then the logger name specified can be “orgname.foo” rather than just “foo”.

New in version 2.7.

The NullHandler class was not present in previous versions, but is now included, so that it need not be defined in library code.

WARNING:root:A shot across the bows

2004-07-02 13:00:08,743 DEBUG A debug message
2004-07-02 13:00:08,743 INFO Some information
2004-07-02 13:00:08,743 WARNING A shot across the bows

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 13:06:18 DEBUG    A debug message
Fri, 02 Jul 2004 13:06:18 INFO     Some information
Fri, 02 Jul 2004 13:06:18 WARNING  A shot across the bows

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 15:35:16 ERROR    Pack my box with 5 dozen liquor jugs

root        : INFO     Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
myapp.area1 : INFO     How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
myapp.area2 : WARNING  Jail zesty vixen who grabbed pay from quack.
myapp.area2 : ERROR    The five boxing wizards jump quickly.

10-22 22:19 root         INFO     Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
10-22 22:19 myapp.area1  DEBUG    Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
10-22 22:19 myapp.area1  INFO     How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
10-22 22:19 myapp.area2  WARNING  Jail zesty vixen who grabbed pay from quack.
10-22 22:19 myapp.area2  ERROR    The five boxing wizards jump quickly.

2008-01-18 14:49:54,023 a.b.c DEBUG    IP: 123.231.231.123 User: sheila   A debug message
2008-01-18 14:49:54,023 a.b.c INFO     IP: 123.231.231.123 User: sheila   An info message with some parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,023 d.e.f CRITICAL IP: 192.168.0.1     User: jim      A message at CRITICAL level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f INFO     IP: 192.168.0.1     User: jim      A message at INFO level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f WARNING  IP: 192.168.0.1     User: sheila   A message at WARNING level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f ERROR    IP: 127.0.0.1       User: fred     A message at ERROR level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f ERROR    IP: 127.0.0.1       User: sheila   A message at ERROR level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f WARNING  IP: 192.168.0.1     User: sheila   A message at WARNING level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f WARNING  IP: 192.168.0.1     User: jim      A message at WARNING level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f INFO     IP: 192.168.0.1     User: fred     A message at INFO level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f WARNING  IP: 192.168.0.1     User: sheila   A message at WARNING level with 2 parameters
2008-01-18 14:49:54,033 d.e.f WARNING  IP: 127.0.0.1       User: jim      A message at WARNING level with 2 parameters

About to start TCP server...
   59 root            INFO     Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
   59 myapp.area1     DEBUG    Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
   69 myapp.area1     INFO     How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
   69 myapp.area2     WARNING  Jail zesty vixen who grabbed pay from quack.
   69 myapp.area2     ERROR    The five boxing wizards jump quickly.

15.7.14.1. StreamHandler

The StreamHandler class, located in the core logging package, sends logging output to streams such as sys.stdout, sys.stderr or any file-like object (or, more precisely, any object which supports write() and flush() methods).

class logging.StreamHandler([stream])

Returns a new instance of the StreamHandler class. If stream is specified, the instance will use it for logging output; otherwise, sys.stderr will be used.

emit(record)

If a formatter is specified, it is used to format the record. The record is then written to the stream with a trailing newline. If exception information is present, it is formatted using traceback.print_exception() and appended to the stream.

flush()

Flushes the stream by calling its flush() method. Note that the close() method is inherited from Handler and so does no output, so an explicit flush() call may be needed at times.

15.7.14.2. FileHandler

The FileHandler class, located in the core logging package, sends logging output to a disk file. It inherits the output functionality from StreamHandler.

class logging.FileHandler(filename[, mode[, encoding[, delay]]])

Returns a new instance of the FileHandler class. The specified file is opened and used as the stream for logging. If mode is not specified, 'a' is used. If encoding is not None, it is used to open the file with that encoding. If delay is true, then file opening is deferred until the first call to emit(). By default, the file grows indefinitely.

Changed in version 2.6: delay was added.

close()

Closes the file.

emit(record)

Outputs the record to the file.

15.7.14.3. NullHandler

New in version 2.7.

The NullHandler class, located in the core logging package, does not do any formatting or output. It is essentially a “no-op” handler for use by library developers.

class logging.NullHandler

Returns a new instance of the NullHandler class.

emit(record)

This method does nothing.

See Configuring Logging for a Library for more information on how to use NullHandler.

15.7.14.4. WatchedFileHandler

New in version 2.6.

The WatchedFileHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, is a FileHandler which watches the file it is logging to. If the file changes, it is closed and reopened using the file name.

A file change can happen because of usage of programs such as newsyslog and logrotate which perform log file rotation. This handler, intended for use under Unix/Linux, watches the file to see if it has changed since the last emit. (A file is deemed to have changed if its device or inode have changed.) If the file has changed, the old file stream is closed, and the file opened to get a new stream.

This handler is not appropriate for use under Windows, because under Windows open log files cannot be moved or renamed - logging opens the files with exclusive locks - and so there is no need for such a handler. Furthermore, ST_INO is not supported under Windows; stat() always returns zero for this value.

class logging.handlers.WatchedFileHandler(filename[, mode[, encoding[, delay]]])

Returns a new instance of the WatchedFileHandler class. The specified file is opened and used as the stream for logging. If mode is not specified, 'a' is used. If encoding is not None, it is used to open the file with that encoding. If delay is true, then file opening is deferred until the first call to emit(). By default, the file grows indefinitely.

Changed in version 2.6: delay was added.

emit(record)

Outputs the record to the file, but first checks to see if the file has changed. If it has, the existing stream is flushed and closed and the file opened again, before outputting the record to the file.

15.7.14.5. RotatingFileHandler

The RotatingFileHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports rotation of disk log files.

class logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(filename[, mode[, maxBytes[, backupCount[, encoding[, delay]]]]])

Returns a new instance of the RotatingFileHandler class. The specified file is opened and used as the stream for logging. If mode is not specified, 'a' is used. If encoding is not None, it is used to open the file with that encoding. If delay is true, then file opening is deferred until the first call to emit(). By default, the file grows indefinitely.

You can use the maxBytes and backupCount values to allow the file to rollover at a predetermined size. When the size is about to be exceeded, the file is closed and a new file is silently opened for output. Rollover occurs whenever the current log file is nearly maxBytes in length; if maxBytes is zero, rollover never occurs. If backupCount is non-zero, the system will save old log files by appending the extensions “.1”, “.2” etc., to the filename. For example, with a backupCount of 5 and a base file name of app.log, you would get app.log, app.log.1, app.log.2, up to app.log.5. The file being written to is always app.log. When this file is filled, it is closed and renamed to app.log.1, and if files app.log.1, app.log.2, etc. exist, then they are renamed to app.log.2, app.log.3 etc. respectively.

Changed in version 2.6: delay was added.

doRollover()

Does a rollover, as described above.

emit(record)

Outputs the record to the file, catering for rollover as described previously.

15.7.14.6. TimedRotatingFileHandler

The TimedRotatingFileHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports rotation of disk log files at certain timed intervals.

class logging.handlers.TimedRotatingFileHandler(filename[, when[, interval[, backupCount[, encoding[, delay[, utc]]]]]])

Returns a new instance of the TimedRotatingFileHandler class. The specified file is opened and used as the stream for logging. On rotating it also sets the filename suffix. Rotating happens based on the product of when and interval.

You can use the when to specify the type of interval. The list of possible values is below. Note that they are not case sensitive.

Value	Type of interval
'S'	Seconds
'M'	Minutes
'H'	Hours
'D'	Days
'W'	Week day (0=Monday)
'midnight'	Roll over at midnight

The system will save old log files by appending extensions to the filename. The extensions are date-and-time based, using the strftime format %Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S or a leading portion thereof, depending on the rollover interval.

When computing the next rollover time for the first time (when the handler is created), the last modification time of an existing log file, or else the current time, is used to compute when the next rotation will occur.

If the utc argument is true, times in UTC will be used; otherwise local time is used.

If backupCount is nonzero, at most backupCount files will be kept, and if more would be created when rollover occurs, the oldest one is deleted. The deletion logic uses the interval to determine which files to delete, so changing the interval may leave old files lying around.

If delay is true, then file opening is deferred until the first call to emit().

Changed in version 2.6: delay was added.

doRollover()

Does a rollover, as described above.

emit(record)

Outputs the record to the file, catering for rollover as described above.

15.7.14.7. SocketHandler

The SocketHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, sends logging output to a network socket. The base class uses a TCP socket.

class logging.handlers.SocketHandler(host, port)

Returns a new instance of the SocketHandler class intended to communicate with a remote machine whose address is given by host and port.

close()

Closes the socket.

emit()

Pickles the record’s attribute dictionary and writes it to the socket in binary format. If there is an error with the socket, silently drops the packet. If the connection was previously lost, re-establishes the connection. To unpickle the record at the receiving end into a LogRecord, use the makeLogRecord() function.

handleError()

Handles an error which has occurred during emit(). The most likely cause is a lost connection. Closes the socket so that we can retry on the next event.

makeSocket()

This is a factory method which allows subclasses to define the precise type of socket they want. The default implementation creates a TCP socket (socket.SOCK_STREAM).

makePickle(record)

Pickles the record’s attribute dictionary in binary format with a length prefix, and returns it ready for transmission across the socket.

Note that pickles aren’t completely secure. If you are concerned about security, you may want to override this method to implement a more secure mechanism. For example, you can sign pickles using HMAC and then verify them on the receiving end, or alternatively you can disable unpickling of global objects on the receiving end.

send(packet)

Send a pickled string packet to the socket. This function allows for partial sends which can happen when the network is busy.

15.7.14.8. DatagramHandler

The DatagramHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, inherits from SocketHandler to support sending logging messages over UDP sockets.

class logging.handlers.DatagramHandler(host, port)

Returns a new instance of the DatagramHandler class intended to communicate with a remote machine whose address is given by host and port.

emit()

Pickles the record’s attribute dictionary and writes it to the socket in binary format. If there is an error with the socket, silently drops the packet. To unpickle the record at the receiving end into a LogRecord, use the makeLogRecord() function.

makeSocket()

The factory method of SocketHandler is here overridden to create a UDP socket (socket.SOCK_DGRAM).

send(s)

Send a pickled string to a socket.

15.7.14.9. SysLogHandler

The SysLogHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports sending logging messages to a remote or local Unix syslog.

class logging.handlers.SysLogHandler([address[, facility[, socktype]]])

Returns a new instance of the SysLogHandler class intended to communicate with a remote Unix machine whose address is given by address in the form of a (host, port) tuple. If address is not specified, ('localhost', 514) is used. The address is used to open a socket. An alternative to providing a (host, port) tuple is providing an address as a string, for example “/dev/log”. In this case, a Unix domain socket is used to send the message to the syslog. If facility is not specified, LOG_USER is used. The type of socket opened depends on the socktype argument, which defaults to socket.SOCK_DGRAM and thus opens a UDP socket. To open a TCP socket (for use with the newer syslog daemons such as rsyslog), specify a value of socket.SOCK_STREAM.

Changed in version 2.7: socktype was added.

close()

Closes the socket to the remote host.

emit(record)

The record is formatted, and then sent to the syslog server. If exception information is present, it is not sent to the server.

encodePriority(facility, priority)

Encodes the facility and priority into an integer. You can pass in strings or integers - if strings are passed, internal mapping dictionaries are used to convert them to integers.

The symbolic LOG_ values are defined in SysLogHandler and mirror the values defined in the sys/syslog.h header file.

Priorities

Name (string)	Symbolic value
alert	LOG_ALERT
crit or critical	LOG_CRIT
debug	LOG_DEBUG
emerg or panic	LOG_EMERG
err or error	LOG_ERR
info	LOG_INFO
notice	LOG_NOTICE
warn or warning	LOG_WARNING

Facilities

Name (string)	Symbolic value
auth	LOG_AUTH
authpriv	LOG_AUTHPRIV
cron	LOG_CRON
daemon	LOG_DAEMON
ftp	LOG_FTP
kern	LOG_KERN
lpr	LOG_LPR
mail	LOG_MAIL
news	LOG_NEWS
syslog	LOG_SYSLOG
user	LOG_USER
uucp	LOG_UUCP
local0	LOG_LOCAL0
local1	LOG_LOCAL1
local2	LOG_LOCAL2
local3	LOG_LOCAL3
local4	LOG_LOCAL4
local5	LOG_LOCAL5
local6	LOG_LOCAL6
local7	LOG_LOCAL7

mapPriority(levelname)

Maps a logging level name to a syslog priority name. You may need to override this if you are using custom levels, or if the default algorithm is not suitable for your needs. The default algorithm maps DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR and CRITICAL to the equivalent syslog names, and all other level names to “warning”.

15.7.14.10. NTEventLogHandler

The NTEventLogHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports sending logging messages to a local Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP event log. Before you can use it, you need Mark Hammond’s Win32 extensions for Python installed.

class logging.handlers.NTEventLogHandler(appname[, dllname[, logtype]])

Returns a new instance of the NTEventLogHandler class. The appname is used to define the application name as it appears in the event log. An appropriate registry entry is created using this name. The dllname should give the fully qualified pathname of a .dll or .exe which contains message definitions to hold in the log (if not specified, 'win32service.pyd' is used - this is installed with the Win32 extensions and contains some basic placeholder message definitions. Note that use of these placeholders will make your event logs big, as the entire message source is held in the log. If you want slimmer logs, you have to pass in the name of your own .dll or .exe which contains the message definitions you want to use in the event log). The logtype is one of 'Application', 'System' or 'Security', and defaults to 'Application'.

close()

At this point, you can remove the application name from the registry as a source of event log entries. However, if you do this, you will not be able to see the events as you intended in the Event Log Viewer - it needs to be able to access the registry to get the .dll name. The current version does not do this.

emit(record)

Determines the message ID, event category and event type, and then logs the message in the NT event log.

getEventCategory(record)

Returns the event category for the record. Override this if you want to specify your own categories. This version returns 0.

getEventType(record)

Returns the event type for the record. Override this if you want to specify your own types. This version does a mapping using the handler’s typemap attribute, which is set up in __init__() to a dictionary which contains mappings for DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR and CRITICAL. If you are using your own levels, you will either need to override this method or place a suitable dictionary in the handler’s typemap attribute.

getMessageID(record)

Returns the message ID for the record. If you are using your own messages, you could do this by having the msg passed to the logger being an ID rather than a format string. Then, in here, you could use a dictionary lookup to get the message ID. This version returns 1, which is the base message ID in win32service.pyd.

15.7.14.11. SMTPHandler

The SMTPHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports sending logging messages to an email address via SMTP.

class logging.handlers.SMTPHandler(mailhost, fromaddr, toaddrs, subject[, credentials])

Returns a new instance of the SMTPHandler class. The instance is initialized with the from and to addresses and subject line of the email. The toaddrs should be a list of strings. To specify a non-standard SMTP port, use the (host, port) tuple format for the mailhost argument. If you use a string, the standard SMTP port is used. If your SMTP server requires authentication, you can specify a (username, password) tuple for the credentials argument.

Changed in version 2.6: credentials was added.

emit(record)

Formats the record and sends it to the specified addressees.

getSubject(record)

If you want to specify a subject line which is record-dependent, override this method.

15.7.14.12. MemoryHandler

The MemoryHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports buffering of logging records in memory, periodically flushing them to a target handler. Flushing occurs whenever the buffer is full, or when an event of a certain severity or greater is seen.

MemoryHandler is a subclass of the more general BufferingHandler, which is an abstract class. This buffers logging records in memory. Whenever each record is added to the buffer, a check is made by calling shouldFlush() to see if the buffer should be flushed. If it should, then flush() is expected to do the needful.

class logging.handlers.BufferingHandler(capacity)

Initializes the handler with a buffer of the specified capacity.

emit(record)

Appends the record to the buffer. If shouldFlush() returns true, calls flush() to process the buffer.

flush()

You can override this to implement custom flushing behavior. This version just zaps the buffer to empty.

shouldFlush(record)

Returns true if the buffer is up to capacity. This method can be overridden to implement custom flushing strategies.

class logging.handlers.MemoryHandler(capacity[, flushLevel[, target]])

Returns a new instance of the MemoryHandler class. The instance is initialized with a buffer size of capacity. If flushLevel is not specified, ERROR is used. If no target is specified, the target will need to be set using setTarget() before this handler does anything useful.

close()

Calls flush(), sets the target to None and clears the buffer.

flush()

For a MemoryHandler, flushing means just sending the buffered records to the target, if there is one. Override if you want different behavior.

setTarget(target)

Sets the target handler for this handler.

shouldFlush(record)

Checks for buffer full or a record at the flushLevel or higher.

15.7.14.13. HTTPHandler

The HTTPHandler class, located in the logging.handlers module, supports sending logging messages to a Web server, using either GET or POST semantics.

class logging.handlers.HTTPHandler(host, url[, method])

Returns a new instance of the HTTPHandler class. The instance is initialized with a host address, url and HTTP method. The host can be of the form host:port, should you need to use a specific port number. If no method is specified, GET is used.

emit(record)

Sends the record to the Web server as an URL-encoded dictionary.

15.7.21.1. Configuration functions

The following functions configure the logging module. They are located in the logging.config module. Their use is optional — you can configure the logging module using these functions or by making calls to the main API (defined in logging itself) and defining handlers which are declared either in logging or logging.handlers.

logging.dictConfig(config)

Takes the logging configuration from a dictionary. The contents of this dictionary are described in Configuration dictionary schema below.

If an error is encountered during configuration, this function will raise a ValueError, TypeError, AttributeError or ImportError with a suitably descriptive message. The following is a (possibly incomplete) list of conditions which will raise an error:

• A level which is not a string or which is a string not corresponding to an actual logging level.
• A propagate value which is not a boolean.
• An id which does not have a corresponding destination.
• A non-existent handler id found during an incremental call.
• An invalid logger name.
• Inability to resolve to an internal or external object.

Parsing is performed by the DictConfigurator class, whose constructor is passed the dictionary used for configuration, and has a configure() method. The logging.config module has a callable attribute dictConfigClass which is initially set to DictConfigurator. You can replace the value of dictConfigClass with a suitable implementation of your own.

dictConfig() calls dictConfigClass passing the specified dictionary, and then calls the configure() method on the returned object to put the configuration into effect:

def dictConfig(config):
    dictConfigClass(config).configure()

For example, a subclass of DictConfigurator could call DictConfigurator.__init__() in its own __init__(), then set up custom prefixes which would be usable in the subsequent configure() call. dictConfigClass would be bound to this new subclass, and then dictConfig() could be called exactly as in the default, uncustomized state.

logging.fileConfig(fname[, defaults])

Reads the logging configuration from a ConfigParser-format file named fname. This function can be called several times from an application, allowing an end user to select from various pre-canned configurations (if the developer provides a mechanism to present the choices and load the chosen configuration). Defaults to be passed to the ConfigParser can be specified in the defaults argument.

logging.listen([port])

Starts up a socket server on the specified port, and listens for new configurations. If no port is specified, the module’s default DEFAULT_LOGGING_CONFIG_PORT is used. Logging configurations will be sent as a file suitable for processing by fileConfig(). Returns a Thread instance on which you can call start() to start the server, and which you can join() when appropriate. To stop the server, call stopListening().

To send a configuration to the socket, read in the configuration file and send it to the socket as a string of bytes preceded by a four-byte length string packed in binary using struct.pack('>L', n).

logging.stopListening()

Stops the listening server which was created with a call to listen(). This is typically called before calling join() on the return value from listen().

15.7.21.2. Configuration dictionary schema

Describing a logging configuration requires listing the various objects to create and the connections between them; for example, you may create a handler named “console” and then say that the logger named “startup” will send its messages to the “console” handler. These objects aren’t limited to those provided by the logging module because you might write your own formatter or handler class. The parameters to these classes may also need to include external objects such as sys.stderr. The syntax for describing these objects and connections is defined in Object connections below.

formatters:
  brief:
    # configuration for formatter with id 'brief' goes here
  precise:
    # configuration for formatter with id 'precise' goes here
handlers:
  h1: #This is an id
   # configuration of handler with id 'h1' goes here
   formatter: brief
  h2: #This is another id
   # configuration of handler with id 'h2' goes here
   formatter: precise
loggers:
  foo.bar.baz:
    # other configuration for logger 'foo.bar.baz'
    handlers: [h1, h2]

formatters:
  brief:
    format: '%(message)s'
  default:
    format: '%(asctime)s %(levelname)-8s %(name)-15s %(message)s'
    datefmt: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
  custom:
      (): my.package.customFormatterFactory
      bar: baz
      spam: 99.9
      answer: 42

{
  'format' : '%(message)s'
}

{
  'format' : '%(asctime)s %(levelname)-8s %(name)-15s %(message)s',
  'datefmt' : '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
}

{
  '()' : 'my.package.customFormatterFactory',
  'bar' : 'baz',
  'spam' : 99.9,
  'answer' : 42
}

my.package.customFormatterFactory(bar='baz', spam=99.9, answer=42)

handlers:
  file:
    # configuration of file handler goes here

  custom:
    (): my.package.MyHandler
    alternate: cfg://handlers.file

handlers:
  email:
    class: logging.handlers.SMTPHandler
    mailhost: localhost
    fromaddr: [email protected]
    toaddrs:
      - [email protected]
      - [email protected]
    subject: Houston, we have a problem.

15.7.21.3. Configuration file format

The configuration file format understood by fileConfig() is based on ConfigParser functionality. The file must contain sections called [loggers], [handlers] and [formatters] which identify by name the entities of each type which are defined in the file. For each such entity, there is a separate section which identifies how that entity is configured. Thus, for a logger named log01 in the [loggers] section, the relevant configuration details are held in a section [logger_log01]. Similarly, a handler called hand01 in the [handlers] section will have its configuration held in a section called [handler_hand01], while a formatter called form01 in the [formatters] section will have its configuration specified in a section called [formatter_form01]. The root logger configuration must be specified in a section called [logger_root].

Examples of these sections in the file are given below.

[loggers]
keys=root,log02,log03,log04,log05,log06,log07

[handlers]
keys=hand01,hand02,hand03,hand04,hand05,hand06,hand07,hand08,hand09

[formatters]
keys=form01,form02,form03,form04,form05,form06,form07,form08,form09

The root logger must specify a level and a list of handlers. An example of a root logger section is given below.

[logger_root]
level=NOTSET
handlers=hand01

The level entry can be one of DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL or NOTSET. For the root logger only, NOTSET means that all messages will be logged. Level values are eval()uated in the context of the logging package’s namespace.

The handlers entry is a comma-separated list of handler names, which must appear in the [handlers] section. These names must appear in the [handlers] section and have corresponding sections in the configuration file.

For loggers other than the root logger, some additional information is required. This is illustrated by the following example.

[logger_parser]
level=DEBUG
handlers=hand01
propagate=1
qualname=compiler.parser

The level and handlers entries are interpreted as for the root logger, except that if a non-root logger’s level is specified as NOTSET, the system consults loggers higher up the hierarchy to determine the effective level of the logger. The propagate entry is set to 1 to indicate that messages must propagate to handlers higher up the logger hierarchy from this logger, or 0 to indicate that messages are not propagated to handlers up the hierarchy. The qualname entry is the hierarchical channel name of the logger, that is to say the name used by the application to get the logger.

Sections which specify handler configuration are exemplified by the following.

[handler_hand01]
class=StreamHandler
level=NOTSET
formatter=form01
args=(sys.stdout,)

The class entry indicates the handler’s class (as determined by eval() in the logging package’s namespace). The level is interpreted as for loggers, and NOTSET is taken to mean “log everything”.

Changed in version 2.6: Added support for resolving the handler’s class as a dotted module and class name.

The formatter entry indicates the key name of the formatter for this handler. If blank, a default formatter (logging._defaultFormatter) is used. If a name is specified, it must appear in the [formatters] section and have a corresponding section in the configuration file.

The args entry, when eval()uated in the context of the logging package’s namespace, is the list of arguments to the constructor for the handler class. Refer to the constructors for the relevant handlers, or to the examples below, to see how typical entries are constructed.

[handler_hand02]
class=FileHandler
level=DEBUG
formatter=form02
args=('python.log', 'w')

[handler_hand03]
class=handlers.SocketHandler
level=INFO
formatter=form03
args=('localhost', handlers.DEFAULT_TCP_LOGGING_PORT)

[handler_hand04]
class=handlers.DatagramHandler
level=WARN
formatter=form04
args=('localhost', handlers.DEFAULT_UDP_LOGGING_PORT)

[handler_hand05]
class=handlers.SysLogHandler
level=ERROR
formatter=form05
args=(('localhost', handlers.SYSLOG_UDP_PORT), handlers.SysLogHandler.LOG_USER)

[handler_hand06]
class=handlers.NTEventLogHandler
level=CRITICAL
formatter=form06
args=('Python Application', '', 'Application')

[handler_hand07]
class=handlers.SMTPHandler
level=WARN
formatter=form07
args=('localhost', 'from@abc', ['user1@abc', 'user2@xyz'], 'Logger Subject')

[handler_hand08]
class=handlers.MemoryHandler
level=NOTSET
formatter=form08
target=
args=(10, ERROR)

[handler_hand09]
class=handlers.HTTPHandler
level=NOTSET
formatter=form09
args=('localhost:9022', '/log', 'GET')

Sections which specify formatter configuration are typified by the following.

[formatter_form01]
format=F1 %(asctime)s %(levelname)s %(message)s
datefmt=
class=logging.Formatter

The format entry is the overall format string, and the datefmt entry is the strftime()-compatible date/time format string. If empty, the package substitutes ISO8601 format date/times, which is almost equivalent to specifying the date format string "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S". The ISO8601 format also specifies milliseconds, which are appended to the result of using the above format string, with a comma separator. An example time in ISO8601 format is 2003-01-23 00:29:50,411.

The class entry is optional. It indicates the name of the formatter’s class (as a dotted module and class name.) This option is useful for instantiating a Formatter subclass. Subclasses of Formatter can present exception tracebacks in an expanded or condensed format.

15.7.21.4. Configuration server example

Here is an example of a module using the logging configuration server:

import logging
import logging.config
import time
import os

# read initial config file
logging.config.fileConfig("logging.conf")

# create and start listener on port 9999
t = logging.config.listen(9999)
t.start()

logger = logging.getLogger("simpleExample")

try:
    # loop through logging calls to see the difference
    # new configurations make, until Ctrl+C is pressed
    while True:
        logger.debug("debug message")
        logger.info("info message")
        logger.warn("warn message")
        logger.error("error message")
        logger.critical("critical message")
        time.sleep(5)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    # cleanup
    logging.config.stopListening()
    t.join()

And here is a script that takes a filename and sends that file to the server, properly preceded with the binary-encoded length, as the new logging configuration:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import socket, sys, struct

data_to_send = open(sys.argv[1], "r").read()

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 9999
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
print "connecting..."
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
print "sending config..."
s.send(struct.pack(">L", len(data_to_send)))
s.send(data_to_send)
s.close()
print "complete"

15.7.22.1. Multiple handlers and formatters

Loggers are plain Python objects. The addHandler() method has no minimum or maximum quota for the number of handlers you may add. Sometimes it will be beneficial for an application to log all messages of all severities to a text file while simultaneously logging errors or above to the console. To set this up, simply configure the appropriate handlers. The logging calls in the application code will remain unchanged. Here is a slight modification to the previous simple module-based configuration example:

import logging

logger = logging.getLogger("simple_example")
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create file handler which logs even debug messages
fh = logging.FileHandler("spam.log")
fh.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create console handler with a higher log level
ch = logging.StreamHandler()
ch.setLevel(logging.ERROR)
# create formatter and add it to the handlers
formatter = logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s")
ch.setFormatter(formatter)
fh.setFormatter(formatter)
# add the handlers to logger
logger.addHandler(ch)
logger.addHandler(fh)

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

Notice that the “application” code does not care about multiple handlers. All that changed was the addition and configuration of a new handler named fh.

The ability to create new handlers with higher- or lower-severity filters can be very helpful when writing and testing an application. Instead of using many print statements for debugging, use logger.debug: Unlike the print statements, which you will have to delete or comment out later, the logger.debug statements can remain intact in the source code and remain dormant until you need them again. At that time, the only change that needs to happen is to modify the severity level of the logger and/or handler to debug.

15.7.22.2. Using logging in multiple modules

It was mentioned above that multiple calls to logging.getLogger('someLogger') return a reference to the same logger object. This is true not only within the same module, but also across modules as long as it is in the same Python interpreter process. It is true for references to the same object; additionally, application code can define and configure a parent logger in one module and create (but not configure) a child logger in a separate module, and all logger calls to the child will pass up to the parent. Here is a main module:

import logging
import auxiliary_module

# create logger with "spam_application"
logger = logging.getLogger("spam_application")
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create file handler which logs even debug messages
fh = logging.FileHandler("spam.log")
fh.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# create console handler with a higher log level
ch = logging.StreamHandler()
ch.setLevel(logging.ERROR)
# create formatter and add it to the handlers
formatter = logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s")
fh.setFormatter(formatter)
ch.setFormatter(formatter)
# add the handlers to the logger
logger.addHandler(fh)
logger.addHandler(ch)

logger.info("creating an instance of auxiliary_module.Auxiliary")
a = auxiliary_module.Auxiliary()
logger.info("created an instance of auxiliary_module.Auxiliary")
logger.info("calling auxiliary_module.Auxiliary.do_something")
a.do_something()
logger.info("finished auxiliary_module.Auxiliary.do_something")
logger.info("calling auxiliary_module.some_function()")
auxiliary_module.some_function()
logger.info("done with auxiliary_module.some_function()")

Here is the auxiliary module:

import logging

# create logger
module_logger = logging.getLogger("spam_application.auxiliary")

class Auxiliary:
    def __init__(self):
        self.logger = logging.getLogger("spam_application.auxiliary.Auxiliary")
        self.logger.info("creating an instance of Auxiliary")
    def do_something(self):
        self.logger.info("doing something")
        a = 1 + 1
        self.logger.info("done doing something")

def some_function():
    module_logger.info("received a call to \"some_function\"")

The output looks like this:

2005-03-23 23:47:11,663 - spam_application - INFO -
   creating an instance of auxiliary_module.Auxiliary
2005-03-23 23:47:11,665 - spam_application.auxiliary.Auxiliary - INFO -
   creating an instance of Auxiliary
2005-03-23 23:47:11,665 - spam_application - INFO -
   created an instance of auxiliary_module.Auxiliary
2005-03-23 23:47:11,668 - spam_application - INFO -
   calling auxiliary_module.Auxiliary.do_something
2005-03-23 23:47:11,668 - spam_application.auxiliary.Auxiliary - INFO -
   doing something
2005-03-23 23:47:11,669 - spam_application.auxiliary.Auxiliary - INFO -
   done doing something
2005-03-23 23:47:11,670 - spam_application - INFO -
   finished auxiliary_module.Auxiliary.do_something
2005-03-23 23:47:11,671 - spam_application - INFO -
   calling auxiliary_module.some_function()
2005-03-23 23:47:11,672 - spam_application.auxiliary - INFO -
   received a call to "some_function"
2005-03-23 23:47:11,673 - spam_application - INFO -
   done with auxiliary_module.some_function()