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# Logging Cookbook

Author: | Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at red-dove dot com>

This page contains a number of recipes related to logging, which have been found useful in the past.

## Using logging in multiple modules

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()

## 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.

## Logging to multiple destinations

Let’s say you want to log to console and file with different message formats and in differing circumstances. Say you want to log messages with levels of DEBUG and higher to file, and those messages at level INFO and higher to the console. Let’s also assume that the file should contain timestamps, but the console messages should not. Here’s how you can achieve this:

    import logging

    # set up logging to file - see previous section for more details
    logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG,
                        format='%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %(levelname)-8s %(message)s',
                        datefmt='%m-%d %H:%M',
                        filename='/temp/myapp.log',
                        filemode='w')
    # define a Handler which writes INFO messages or higher to the sys.stderr
    console = logging.StreamHandler()
    console.setLevel(logging.INFO)
    # set a format which is simpler for console use
    formatter = logging.Formatter('%(name)-12s: %(levelname)-8s %(message)s')
    # tell the handler to use this format
    console.setFormatter(formatter)
    # add the handler to the root logger
    logging.getLogger('').addHandler(console)

    # Now, we can log to the root logger, or any other logger. First the root...
    logging.info('Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.')

    # Now, define a couple of other loggers which might represent areas in your
    # application:

    logger1 = logging.getLogger('myapp.area1')
    logger2 = logging.getLogger('myapp.area2')

    logger1.debug('Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.')
    logger1.info('How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.')
    logger2.warning('Jail zesty vixen who grabbed pay from quack.')
    logger2.error('The five boxing wizards jump quickly.')

When you run this, on the console you will see

    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.

and in the file you will see something like

    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.

As you can see, the DEBUG message only shows up in the file. The other messages are sent to both destinations.

This example uses console and file handlers, but you can use any number and combination of handlers you choose.

## 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

    with open(sys.argv[1], 'rb') as f:
        data_to_send = f.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')

## Sending and receiving logging events across a network

Let’s say you want to send logging events across a network, and handle them at the receiving end. A simple way of doing this is attaching a `SocketHandler` instance to the root logger at the sending end:

    import logging, logging.handlers

    rootLogger = logging.getLogger('')
    rootLogger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    socketHandler = logging.handlers.SocketHandler('localhost',
                        logging.handlers.DEFAULT_TCP_LOGGING_PORT)
    # don't bother with a formatter, since a socket handler sends the event as
    # an unformatted pickle
    rootLogger.addHandler(socketHandler)

    # Now, we can log to the root logger, or any other logger. First the root...
    logging.info('Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.')

    # Now, define a couple of other loggers which might represent areas in your
    # application:

    logger1 = logging.getLogger('myapp.area1')
    logger2 = logging.getLogger('myapp.area2')

    logger1.debug('Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.')
    logger1.info('How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.')
    logger2.warning('Jail zesty vixen who grabbed pay from quack.')
    logger2.error('The five boxing wizards jump quickly.')

At the receiving end, you can set up a receiver using the `SocketServer` module. Here is a basic working example:

    import pickle
    import logging
    import logging.handlers
    import SocketServer
    import struct

    class LogRecordStreamHandler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):
        """Handler for a streaming logging request.

        This basically logs the record using whatever logging policy is
        configured locally.
        """

        def handle(self):
            """
            Handle multiple requests - each expected to be a 4-byte length,
            followed by the LogRecord in pickle format. Logs the record
            according to whatever policy is configured locally.
            """
            while True:
                chunk = self.connection.recv(4)
                if len(chunk) < 4:
                    break
                slen = struct.unpack('>L', chunk)[0]
                chunk = self.connection.recv(slen)
                while len(chunk) < slen:
                    chunk = chunk + self.connection.recv(slen - len(chunk))
                obj = self.unPickle(chunk)
                record = logging.makeLogRecord(obj)
                self.handleLogRecord(record)

        def unPickle(self, data):
            return pickle.loads(data)

        def handleLogRecord(self, record):
            # if a name is specified, we use the named logger rather than the one
            # implied by the record.
            if self.server.logname is not None:
                name = self.server.logname
            else:
                name = record.name
            logger = logging.getLogger(name)
            # N.B. EVERY record gets logged. This is because Logger.handle
            # is normally called AFTER logger-level filtering. If you want
            # to do filtering, do it at the client end to save wasting
            # cycles and network bandwidth!
            logger.handle(record)

    class LogRecordSocketReceiver(SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer):
        """
        Simple TCP socket-based logging receiver suitable for testing.
        """

        allow_reuse_address = 1

        def __init__(self, host='localhost',
                     port=logging.handlers.DEFAULT_TCP_LOGGING_PORT,
                     handler=LogRecordStreamHandler):
            SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer.__init__(self, (host, port), handler)
            self.abort = 0
            self.timeout = 1
            self.logname = None

        def serve_until_stopped(self):
            import select
            abort = 0
            while not abort:
                rd, wr, ex = select.select([self.socket.fileno()],
                                           [], [],
                                           self.timeout)
                if rd:
                    self.handle_request()
                abort = self.abort

    def main():
        logging.basicConfig(
            format='%(relativeCreated)5d %(name)-15s %(levelname)-8s %(message)s')
        tcpserver = LogRecordSocketReceiver()
        print('About to start TCP server...')
        tcpserver.serve_until_stopped()

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        main()

First run the server, and then the client. On the client side, nothing is printed on the console; on the server side, you should see something like:

    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.

Note that there are some security issues with pickle in some scenarios. If these affect you, you can use an alternative serialization scheme by overriding the `makePickle()` method and implementing your alternative there, as well as adapting the above script to use your alternative serialization.

## Adding contextual information to your logging output

Sometimes you want logging output to contain contextual information in addition to the parameters passed to the logging call. For example, in a networked application, it may be desirable to log client-specific information in the log (e.g. remote client’s username, or IP address). Although you could use the extra parameter to achieve this, it’s not always convenient to pass the information in this way. While it might be tempting to create `Logger` instances on a per-connection basis, this is not a good idea because these instances are not garbage collected. While this is not a problem in practice, when the number of `Logger` instances is dependent on the level of granularity you want to use in logging an application, it could be hard to manage if the number of `Logger` instances becomes effectively unbounded.

### Using LoggerAdapters to impart contextual information

An easy way in which you can pass contextual information to be output along with logging event information is to use the `LoggerAdapter` class. This class is designed to look like a `Logger`, so that you can call `debug()`, `info()`, `warning()`, `error()`, `exception()`, `critical()` and `log()`. These methods have the same signatures as their counterparts in `Logger`, so you can use the two types of instances interchangeably.

When you create an instance of `LoggerAdapter`, you pass it a `Logger` instance and a dict-like object which contains your contextual information. When you call one of the logging methods on an instance of `LoggerAdapter`, it delegates the call to the underlying instance of `Logger` passed to its constructor, and arranges to pass the contextual information in the delegated call. Here’s a snippet from the code of `LoggerAdapter`:

    def debug(self, msg, *args, **kwargs):
        """
        Delegate a debug call to the underlying logger, after adding
        contextual information from this adapter instance.
        """
        msg, kwargs = self.process(msg, kwargs)
        self.logger.debug(msg, *args, **kwargs)

The `process()` method of `LoggerAdapter` is where the contextual information is added to the logging output. It’s passed the message and keyword arguments of the logging call, and it passes back (potentially) modified versions of these to use in the call to the underlying logger. The default implementation of this method leaves the message alone, but inserts an ‘extra’ key in the keyword argument whose value is the dict-like object passed to the constructor. Of course, if you had passed an ‘extra’ keyword argument in the call to the adapter, it will be silently overwritten.

The advantage of using ‘extra’ is that the values in the dict-like object are merged into the `LogRecord` instance’s __dict__, allowing you to use customized strings with your `Formatter` instances which know about the keys of the dict-like object. If you need a different method, e.g. if you want to prepend or append the contextual information to the message string, you just need to subclass `LoggerAdapter` and override `process()` to do what you need. Here is a simple example:

    class CustomAdapter(logging.LoggerAdapter):
        """
        This example adapter expects the passed in dict-like object to have a
        'connid' key, whose value in brackets is prepended to the log message.
        """
        def process(self, msg, kwargs):
            return '[%s] %s' % (self.extra['connid'], msg), kwargs

which you can use like this:

    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
    adapter = CustomAdapter(logger, {'connid': some_conn_id})

Then any events that you log to the adapter will have the value of `some_conn_id` prepended to the log messages.

#### Using objects other than dicts to pass contextual information

You don’t need to pass an actual dict to a `LoggerAdapter` - you could pass an instance of a class which implements `__getitem__` and `__iter__` so that it looks like a dict to logging. This would be useful if you want to generate values dynamically (whereas the values in a dict would be constant).

### Using Filters to impart contextual information

You can also add contextual information to log output using a user-defined `Filter`. `Filter` instances are allowed to modify the `LogRecords` passed to them, including adding additional attributes which can then be output using a suitable format string, or if needed a custom `Formatter`.

For example in a web application, the request being processed (or at least, the interesting parts of it) can be stored in a threadlocal (`threading.local`) variable, and then accessed from a `Filter` to add, say, information from the request - say, the remote IP address and remote user’s username - to the `LogRecord`, using the attribute names ‘ip’ and ‘user’ as in the `LoggerAdapter` example above. In that case, the same format string can be used to get similar output to that shown above. Here’s an example script:

    import logging
    from random import choice

    class ContextFilter(logging.Filter):
        """
        This is a filter which injects contextual information into the log.

        Rather than use actual contextual information, we just use random
        data in this demo.
        """

        USERS = ['jim', 'fred', 'sheila']
        IPS = ['123.231.231.123', '127.0.0.1', '192.168.0.1']

        def filter(self, record):

            record.ip = choice(ContextFilter.IPS)
            record.user = choice(ContextFilter.USERS)
            return True

    if __name__ == '__main__':
       levels = (logging.DEBUG, logging.INFO, logging.WARNING, logging.ERROR, logging.CRITICAL)
       logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG,
                           format='%(asctime)-15s %(name)-5s %(levelname)-8s IP: %(ip)-15s User: %(user)-8s %(message)s')
       a1 = logging.getLogger('a.b.c')
       a2 = logging.getLogger('d.e.f')

       f = ContextFilter()
       a1.addFilter(f)
       a2.addFilter(f)
       a1.debug('A debug message')
       a1.info('An info message with %s', 'some parameters')
       for x in range(10):
           lvl = choice(levels)
           lvlname = logging.getLevelName(lvl)
           a2.log(lvl, 'A message at %s level with %d %s', lvlname, 2, 'parameters')

which, when run, produces something like:

    2010-09-06 22:38:15,292 a.b.c DEBUG    IP: 123.231.231.123 User: fred     A debug message
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 a.b.c INFO     IP: 192.168.0.1     User: sheila   An info message with some parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f CRITICAL IP: 127.0.0.1       User: sheila   A message at CRITICAL level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f ERROR    IP: 127.0.0.1       User: jim      A message at ERROR level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f DEBUG    IP: 127.0.0.1       User: sheila   A message at DEBUG level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f ERROR    IP: 123.231.231.123 User: fred     A message at ERROR level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f CRITICAL IP: 192.168.0.1     User: jim      A message at CRITICAL level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f CRITICAL IP: 127.0.0.1       User: sheila   A message at CRITICAL level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,300 d.e.f DEBUG    IP: 192.168.0.1     User: jim      A message at DEBUG level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,301 d.e.f ERROR    IP: 127.0.0.1       User: sheila   A message at ERROR level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,301 d.e.f DEBUG    IP: 123.231.231.123 User: fred     A message at DEBUG level with 2 parameters
    2010-09-06 22:38:15,301 d.e.f INFO     IP: 123.231.231.123 User: fred     A message at INFO level with 2 parameters

## Logging to a single file from multiple processes

Although logging is thread-safe, and logging to a single file from multiple threads in a single process is supported, logging to a single file from multiple processes is not supported, because there is no standard way to serialize access to a single file across multiple processes in Python. If you need to log to a single file from multiple processes, one way of doing this is to have all the processes log to a `SocketHandler`, and have a separate process which implements a socket server which reads from the socket and logs to file. (If you prefer, you can dedicate one thread in one of the existing processes to perform this function.) This section documents this approach in more detail and includes a working socket receiver which can be used as a starting point for you to adapt in your own applications.

If you are using a recent version of Python which includes the `multiprocessing` module, you could write your own handler which uses the `Lock` class from this module to serialize access to the file from your processes. The existing `FileHandler` and subclasses do not make use of `multiprocessing` at present, though they may do so in the future. Note that at present, the `multiprocessing` module does not provide working lock functionality on all platforms (see http://bugs.python.org/issue3770).

## Using file rotation

Sometimes you want to let a log file grow to a certain size, then open a new file and log to that. You may want to keep a certain number of these files, and when that many files have been created, rotate the files so that the number of files and the size of the files both remain bounded. For this usage pattern, the logging package provides 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 too small as an extreme example. You would want to set maxBytes to an appropriate value.

## An example dictionary-based configuration

Below is an example of a logging configuration dictionary - it’s taken from the documentation on the Django project. This dictionary is passed to `dictConfig()` to put the configuration into effect:

    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'disable_existing_loggers': True,
        'formatters': {
            'verbose': {
                'format': '%(levelname)s %(asctime)s %(module)s %(process)d %(thread)d %(message)s'
            },
            'simple': {
                'format': '%(levelname)s %(message)s'
            },
        },
        'filters': {
            'special': {
                '()': 'project.logging.SpecialFilter',
                'foo': 'bar',
            }
        },
        'handlers': {
            'null': {
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'class':'django.utils.log.NullHandler',
            },
            'console':{
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'class':'logging.StreamHandler',
                'formatter': 'simple'
            },
            'mail_admins': {
                'level': 'ERROR',
                'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler',
                'filters': ['special']
            }
        },
        'loggers': {
            'django': {
                'handlers':['null'],
                'propagate': True,
                'level':'INFO',
            },
            'django.request': {
                'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
                'level': 'ERROR',
                'propagate': False,
            },
            'myproject.custom': {
                'handlers': ['console', 'mail_admins'],
                'level': 'INFO',
                'filters': ['special']
            }
        }
    }

For more information about this configuration, you can see the relevant section of the Django documentation.

## Inserting a BOM into messages sent to a SysLogHandler

RFC 5424 requires that a Unicode message be sent to a syslog daemon as a set of bytes which have the following structure: an optional pure-ASCII component, followed by a UTF-8 Byte Order Mark (BOM), followed by Unicode encoded using UTF-8. (See the relevant section of the specification.)

In Python 2.6 and 2.7, code was added to `SysLogHandler` to insert a BOM into the message, but unfortunately, it was implemented incorrectly, with the BOM appearing at the beginning of the message and hence not allowing any pure-ASCII component to appear before it.

As this behaviour is broken, the incorrect BOM insertion code is being removed from Python 2.7.4 and later. However, it is not being replaced, and if you want to produce RFC 5424-compliant messages which include a BOM, an optional pure-ASCII sequence before it and arbitrary Unicode after it, encoded using UTF-8, then you need to do the following:

1. Attach a `Formatter` instance to your `SysLogHandler` instance, with a format string such as:

       u'ASCII section\ufeffUnicode section'

   The Unicode code point `u'\ufeff'`, when encoded using UTF-8, will be encoded as a UTF-8 BOM – the byte-string `'\xef\xbb\xbf'`.

2. Replace the ASCII section with whatever placeholders you like, but make sure that the data that appears in there after substitution is always ASCII (that way, it will remain unchanged after UTF-8 encoding).

3. Replace the Unicode section with whatever placeholders you like; if the data which appears there after substitution contains characters outside the ASCII range, that’s fine – it will be encoded using UTF-8.

If the formatted message is Unicode, it will be encoded using UTF-8 encoding by `SysLogHandler`. If you follow the above rules, you should be able to produce RFC 5424-compliant messages. If you don’t, logging may not complain, but your messages will not be RFC 5424-compliant, and your syslog daemon may complain.

## Implementing structured logging

Although most logging messages are intended for reading by humans, and thus not readily machine-parseable, there might be cirumstances where you want to output messages in a structured format which is capable of being parsed by a program (without needing complex regular expressions to parse the log message). This is straightforward to achieve using the logging package. There are a number of ways in which this could be achieved, but the following is a simple approach which uses JSON to serialise the event in a machine-parseable manner:

    import json
    import logging

    class StructuredMessage(object):
        def __init__(self, message, **kwargs):
            self.message = message
            self.kwargs = kwargs

        def __str__(self):
            return '%s >>> %s' % (self.message, json.dumps(self.kwargs))

    _ = StructuredMessage   # optional, to improve readability

    logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format='%(message)s')
    logging.info(_('message 1', foo='bar', bar='baz', num=123, fnum=123.456))

If the above script is run, it prints:

    message 1 >>> {"fnum": 123.456, "num": 123, "bar": "baz", "foo": "bar"}

Note that the order of items might be different according to the version of Python used.

If you need more specialised processing, you can use a custom JSON encoder, as in the following complete example:

    from __future__ import unicode_literals

    import json
    import logging

    # This next bit is to ensure the script runs unchanged on 2.x and 3.x
    try:
        unicode
    except NameError:
        unicode = str

    class Encoder(json.JSONEncoder):
        def default(self, o):
            if isinstance(o, set):
                return tuple(o)
            elif isinstance(o, unicode):
                return o.encode('unicode_escape').decode('ascii')
            return super(Encoder, self).default(o)

    class StructuredMessage(object):
        def __init__(self, message, **kwargs):
            self.message = message
            self.kwargs = kwargs

        def __str__(self):
            s = Encoder().encode(self.kwargs)
            return '%s >>> %s' % (self.message, s)

    _ = StructuredMessage   # optional, to improve readability

    def main():
        logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format='%(message)s')
        logging.info(_('message 1', set_value=set([1, 2, 3]), snowman='\u2603'))

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        main()

When the above script is run, it prints:

    message 1 >>> {"snowman": "\u2603", "set_value": [1, 2, 3]}

Note that the order of items might be different according to the version of Python used.

## Customizing handlers with `dictConfig()`

There are times when you want to customize logging handlers in particular ways, and if you use `dictConfig()` you may be able to do this without subclassing. As an example, consider that you may want to set the ownership of a log file. On POSIX, this is easily done using `shutil.chown()`, but the file handlers in the stdlib don’t offer built-in support. You can customize handler creation using a plain function such as:

    def owned_file_handler(filename, mode='a', encoding=None, owner=None):
        if owner:
            if not os.path.exists(filename):
                open(filename, 'a').close()
            shutil.chown(filename, *owner)
        return logging.FileHandler(filename, mode, encoding)

You can then specify, in a logging configuration passed to `dictConfig()`, that a logging handler be created by calling this function:

    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'disable_existing_loggers': False,
        'formatters': {
            'default': {
                'format': '%(asctime)s %(levelname)s %(name)s %(message)s'
            },
        },
        'handlers': {
            'file':{
                # The values below are popped from this dictionary and
                # used to create the handler, set the handler's level and
                # its formatter.
                '()': owned_file_handler,
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'formatter': 'default',
                # The values below are passed to the handler creator callable
                # as keyword arguments.
                'owner': ['pulse', 'pulse'],
                'filename': 'chowntest.log',
                'mode': 'w',
                'encoding': 'utf-8',
            },
        },
        'root': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
        },
    }

In this example I am setting the ownership using the `pulse` user and group, just for the purposes of illustration. Putting it together into a working script, `chowntest.py`:

    import logging, logging.config, os, shutil

    def owned_file_handler(filename, mode='a', encoding=None, owner=None):
        if owner:
            if not os.path.exists(filename):
                open(filename, 'a').close()
            shutil.chown(filename, *owner)
        return logging.FileHandler(filename, mode, encoding)

    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'disable_existing_loggers': False,
        'formatters': {
            'default': {
                'format': '%(asctime)s %(levelname)s %(name)s %(message)s'
            },
        },
        'handlers': {
            'file':{
                # The values below are popped from this dictionary and
                # used to create the handler, set the handler's level and
                # its formatter.
                '()': owned_file_handler,
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'formatter': 'default',
                # The values below are passed to the handler creator callable
                # as keyword arguments.
                'owner': ['pulse', 'pulse'],
                'filename': 'chowntest.log',
                'mode': 'w',
                'encoding': 'utf-8',
            },
        },
        'root': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
        },
    }

    logging.config.dictConfig(LOGGING)
    logger = logging.getLogger('mylogger')
    logger.debug('A debug message')

To run this, you will probably need to run as `root`:

    $ sudo python3.3 chowntest.py
    $ cat chowntest.log
    2013-11-05 09:34:51,128 DEBUG mylogger A debug message
    $ ls -l chowntest.log
    -rw-r--r-- 1 pulse pulse 55 2013-11-05 09:34 chowntest.log

Note that this example uses Python 3.3 because that’s where `shutil.chown()` makes an appearance. This approach should work with any Python version that supports `dictConfig()` - namely, Python 2.7, 3.2 or later. With pre-3.3 versions, you would need to implement the actual ownership change using e.g. `os.chown()`.

In practice, the handler-creating function may be in a utility module somewhere in your project. Instead of the line in the configuration:

    '()': owned_file_handler,

you could use e.g.:

    '()': 'ext://project.util.owned_file_handler',

where `project.util` can be replaced with the actual name of the package where the function resides. In the above working script, using `'ext://__main__.owned_file_handler'` should work. Here, the actual callable is resolved by `dictConfig()` from the `ext://` specification.

This example hopefully also points the way to how you could implement other types of file change - e.g. setting specific POSIX permission bits - in the same way, using `os.chmod()`.

Of course, the approach could also be extended to types of handler other than a `FileHandler` - for example, one of the rotating file handlers, or a different type of handler altogether.

## Configuring filters with `dictConfig()`

You can configure filters using `dictConfig()`, though it might not be obvious at first glance how to do it (hence this recipe). Since `Filter` is the only filter class included in the standard library, and it is unlikely to cater to many requirements (it’s only there as a base class), you will typically need to define your own `Filter` subclass with an overridden `filter()` method. To do this, specify the `()` key in the configuration dictionary for the filter, specifying a callable which will be used to create the filter (a class is the most obvious, but you can provide any callable which returns a `Filter` instance). Here is a complete example:

    import logging
    import logging.config
    import sys

    class MyFilter(logging.Filter):
        def __init__(self, param=None):
            self.param = param

        def filter(self, record):
            if self.param is None:
                allow = True
            else:
                allow = self.param not in record.msg
            if allow:
                record.msg = 'changed: ' + record.msg
            return allow

    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'filters': {
            'myfilter': {
                '()': MyFilter,
                'param': 'noshow',
            }
        },
        'handlers': {
            'console': {
                'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
                'filters': ['myfilter']
            }
        },
        'root': {
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'handlers': ['console']
        },
    }

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        logging.config.dictConfig(LOGGING)
        logging.debug('hello')
        logging.debug('hello - noshow')

This example shows how you can pass configuration data to the callable which constructs the instance, in the form of keyword parameters. When run, the above script will print:

    changed: hello

which shows that the filter is working as configured.

A couple of extra points to note:

- If you can’t refer to the callable directly in the configuration (e.g. if it lives in a different module, and you can’t import it directly where the configuration dictionary is), you can use the form `ext://...` as described in Access to external objects. For example, you could have used the text `'ext://__main__.MyFilter'` instead of `MyFilter` in the above example.
- As well as for filters, this technique can also be used to configure custom handlers and formatters. See User-defined objects for more information on how logging supports using user-defined objects in its configuration, and see the other cookbook recipe Customizing handlers with dictConfig() above.

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