Log! Don't Print! Use the Python logging library
Python has become one of the most popular application languages in IT, shadow-IT, and data science. Python developers continually improve their systems by iterating from example patterns to best practices.
The Python logging package should be used wherever print() statements were in the past. The logging package makes it possible to classify output at different severities. logging has the ability to enable and disable the generation of output at those different levels. This means you can create debug-level statements that are useful to programmers without letting those statements bleed into a production application. The referenced GitHub project shows how to load logging configurations, and how to change where logging goes based on those configurations.
- Classify output by severity
- Filter output generation by severity
- Send data to different sinks based on the program module and the severity
Logging Design
Logging is routed through loggers that are instantiated in each python module. Those loggers are configured with one or more handlers. Each handler writes to its own log sink based on the filter criteria it was initialized with. This means a log message can be written out by 0 or more handlers depending on the logging level of the message and the filter message of the handlers.
Watch the video or read the Python logging documentation for an explanation of how levels work. I'm too tired to write it up right now.
Video Walkthrough
References
Python logging documentation
- https://docs.python.org/3/howto/logging.html
The sample code for this blog came from
- https://github.com/freemansoft/Network-intrusion-dataset-creator
Logging configuration - logging_config.yaml
Our log output format, handler configurations, and logger configurations are all stored in a yaml file. This file shows a variety of formatters and handlers. It contains a custom configuration for each python module that intends to log. Small programs can probably just run with the console logger and the root configuration. Larger or production programs will probably have something more detailed like this example.
version: 1
disable_existing_loggers: true
formatters:
brief:
format: "%(levelname)-8s; %(name)-15s; %(message)s"
single_line:
format: "%(asctime)s; %(levelname)-8s; %(name)-15s; %(funcName)-15s;%(lineno)4d; %(message)s"
multi_thread:
format: "%(asctime)s; %(levelname)-8s; [%(thread;)s]; %(name)-15s; %(funcName)-15s;%(lineno)-4d; %(message)s"
multi_process:
format: "%(asctime)s; %(levelname)-8s; [%(process)d]; %(name)-15s; %(funcName)-15s;%(lineno)-4d; %(message)s"
handlers:
console:
level: INFO
class: logging.StreamHandler
formatter: multi_process
stream: ext://sys.stdout
info_file_handler:
level: INFO
class: logging.handlers.WatchedFileHandler
formatter: multi_process
filename: ./info.log
# file behavior a=append w=overwrite
mode: w
encoding: utf-8
error_file_handler:
level: WARNING
class: logging.handlers.WatchedFileHandler
formatter: multi_process
filename: ./errors.log
# file behavior a=append w=overwrite
mode: w
encoding: utf-8
debug_file_handler:
level: DEBUG
class: logging.handlers.WatchedFileHandler
formatter: multi_process
filename: ./debug.log
# file behavior a=append w=overwrite
mode: w
encoding: utf-8
loggers:
capture:
#level: INFO
handlers: [error_file_handler, info_file_handler, debug_file_handler]
services:
#level: INFO
handlers: [error_file_handler, info_file_handler, debug_file_handler]
detectors:
#level: INFO
handlers: [error_file_handler, info_file_handler, debug_file_handler]
counts:
#level: INFO
handlers: [error_file_handler, info_file_handler, debug_file_handler]
__main__:
#level: INFO
handlers: [error_file_handler, debug_file_handler]
root:
level: INFO
handlers:
- console
Logging initialization - loggingconfig.py
The logging module must be initialized one time. Here we have a function that we can call on program startup to initialize the logging configuration.
import logging
import logging.config
import yaml
def load_logging():
with open("logging_config.yaml", "r") as f:
config = yaml.safe_load(f.read())
logging.config.dictConfig(config)
Creating a logger in main()
Load the logging module one time on startup. Here we demonstrate loading the config at the top of main()
import logging
from loggingconfig import load_logging
def main():
load_logging()
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
Creating a logger in a Multi-processor Class
Each python file will need access to a logger. The sample program is a bunch of multi-processing modules. We can create a logger in the __init__() function. Non-class python files can just do it at the top.
class PacketCapture(multiprocessing.Process):
def __init__(
self, name, tshark_program, input_file_name, interface, how_long, outQ
):
multiprocessing.Process.__init__(self)
self.name = name
self.logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
Creating a logger in main()
Non-class python files also need to create a logger. In this case the module will actually be __main__ . Note that this example shows both initializing the logging system and creating the logger for this file.
if __name__ == "__main__":
load_logging()
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
Logging a message and deferring string construction
It is very important that you do not pre-construct logging strings. The logger will format the logging string only if the message is actually going to be sent to one of the sinks. A log of logging, especially debug(), will never make it past the handlers. The type of string formatting shown below will insure that the debug() log strings would never be created in those situations.
self.logger.debug("Working with line %s", line)
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