logging-exceptions 0.1.4

Installation

Use setup.py :

python setup.py install

Warning

This module modifies sys.excepthook when it is imported!

Usage

import logging
import logging_exceptions as exlog

e = ValueError("Wrong value")
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
with exlog.log_to_exception(logger, e):
    logger.critical("This is a %s log mressage", "long")
raise e # The exception can also be raised inside the with statement

import logging_exceptions as exlog
import logging
try:
    e = ValueError("Wrong value")
    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
    with exlog.log_to_exception(logger, e):
        logger.critical("This is a %s log mressage", "long")
        raise e
except ValueError as err:
    exlog.log(err, level=logging.DEBUG)

import argparse
import logging_exceptions as exlog

parser=argparse.ArgumentParser("Some help text")
exlog.update_parser(parser)
args = parser.parse_args()

logging.basicConfig()
# The following call updates the log levels of the root logger
# and potential some other loggers.
exlog.config_from_args(args)

# Set the log-level for the loggers with the names `path.to.module1`
# and `path.to.module2` to DEBUG.
python script.py --debug path.to.module1,path.to.module2

Examples

See the file ‘logging_exceptions_examples.py’

Comparison to logging.handlers.MemoryHandler

The logging.handlers module contains a handler for a similar purpose: The MemoryHandler. It buffers log messages and only emits them, if a log record of severity error or above is encountered. I will quickly explain the differences between MemoryHandler and my module:

MemoryHandler is great if you know that an event of severity ERROR may occur in the future (typically in the same function) and you want to prepare for this potential exception. Typically, you know the scope for which the exceptions have to be buffered and you know when the buffered exceptions are no longer needed and can be discarded.

While for MemoryHandler the error condition is rather unspecific, the scope in which we have to decide between discarding and emitting the log messages is well known.

The log_to_exception decorator, on the other hand, is useful if the exception is well specified (it is already created/ caught), but the the scope in which the exception may or may not be caught is unspecified. Examples would be library functions that raise an error.

A typical example would be the following:

import logging
from logging_exceptions import log_to_exception

# Whoever calls public_function may want to catch the ValueError and hide
# the log messages or change their level to logging.DEBUG
def public_function():
    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
    a = some_complex_calculation(12)
    try:
        some_function(a)
    except ValueError as e:
        with log_to_exception(logger, e):
            log.error("While calling `some_function` with %s, "
                      "which is result of `some_complex_calculation`(%d),"
                      " an error occurred", a, 12)
        raise

Compatibility

Compatible with python 2.7 and python 3