Classes and Functions

Logging Inside Python Austin Cepalia 02:45

So far, we have seen the default logger named root, which is used by the logging module whenever its functions are called directly like this: logging.debug(). You can (and should) define your own logger by creating an object of the Logger class, especially if your application has multiple modules. Let’s have a look at some of the classes and functions in the module.

The most commonly used classes defined in the logging module are the following:

Logger: This is the class whose objects will be used in the application code directly to call the functions.
LogRecord: Loggers automatically create LogRecord objects that have all the information related to the event being logged, like the name of the logger, the function, the line number, the message, and more.
Handler: Handlers send the LogRecord to the required output destination, like the console or a file. Handler is a base for subclasses like StreamHandler, FileHandler, SMTPHandler, HTTPHandler, and more. These subclasses send the logging outputs to corresponding destinations, like sys.stdout or a disk file.
Formatter: This is where you specify the format of the output by specifying a string format that lists out the attributes that the output should contain.

Out of these, we mostly deal with the objects of the Logger class, which are instantiated using the module-level function logging.getLogger(name). Multiple calls to getLogger() with the same name will return a reference to the same Logger object, which saves us from passing the logger objects to every part where it’s needed. Here’s an example:

Python
      
import logging

logger = logging.getLogger('example_logger')
logger.warning('This is a warning')

This is what you’d get:

Shell

This is a warning

00:00 Up until this point we’ve been using the default logger, which is named root. This is great for quick logging, but for more robust applications we need something more customizable.

00:13 The logging module contains several classes we can instantiate to create our own customized logger.

00:21 The first two classes are called Logger and LogRecord. The Logger class simply represents our custom logger. We’ll be instantiating this and then using custom methods in order to customize it.

00:36 Then we have LogRecord, which we won’t actually be instantiating ourselves. Loggers automatically create LogRecord objects for each event that we log. This LogRecord contains information about the event, such as the logger name, the function, the line number, the message, and more.

00:58 Information from the LogRecords are what populate the log output that we see.

01:05 Next is the Handler and the Formatter. The handler’s job is to send the LogRecord to the required output destination.

01:14 We won’t directly instantiate the Handler class. Instead, we’ll instantiate a subclass. Each subclass of Handler represents a destination. There’s StreamHandler for outputting to destinations like stdout, FileHandler for outputting to a file, SMTPHandler for emailing logging messages, and HTTPHandler for sending log messages to a web server through GET and POST HTTP methods, and many more. Finally, the Formatter class is used to specify the string format of the output, like we saw earlier.

01:54 Let’s see how we can create our own custom logger. We can use the getLogger() method to create a new Logger object. Here, 'example_logger' is the name of our new logger, and we create a WARNING level event by calling the warning() method on this new logger, just as we did before.

02:15 But you’ll notice that the output of this program is just the message that says, This is a warning. By default, our custom logger has no formatting, so we’re not seeing the logger name or severity level logged.

02:30 That’s where the Formatter class will come in handy. Let’s see how we can use all of these classes together to create a simple logging system that can output both to stdout and to a file simultaneously.

Kalesis on July 30, 2019

Hello, in the video the code is wrong. Dice “logging” instead of “logger”. regards

victorariasvanegas on June 3, 2020

Yeah your’re rigth, the mistake is here 02:12

Glenn Lehman on Jan. 13, 2023

The code in the text is correct.

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