15.9. logging.handlers — Logging handlers

Important

This page contains only reference information. For tutorials, please see

Source code: Lib/logging/handlers.py

The following useful handlers are provided in the package. Note that three of the handlers (StreamHandler, FileHandler and NullHandler) are actually defined in the logging module itself, but have been documented here along with the other handlers.

15.9.1. 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=None)

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 newline terminator. 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.

15.9.2. 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='a', encoding=None, delay=False)

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.

15.9.3. 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.

handle(record)

This method does nothing.

createLock()

This method returns None for the lock, since there is no underlying I/O to which access needs to be serialized.

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

15.9.4. 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.

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.

15.9.5. RotatingFileHandler

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

class logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(filename, mode='a', maxBytes=0, backupCount=0, encoding=None, delay=0)

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 either of maxBytes or backupCount 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.

15.9.6. 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='h', interval=1, backupCount=0, encoding=None, delay=False, utc=False)

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
'W0'-'W6' Weekday (0=Monday)
'midnight' Roll over at midnight

When using weekday-based rotation, specify ‘W0’ for Monday, ‘W1’ for Tuesday, and so on up to ‘W6’ for Sunday. In this case, the value passed for interval isn’t used.

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 and utc were added.

doRollover()

Does a rollover, as described above.

emit(record)

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

15.9.7. 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.

createSocket()

Tries to create a socket; on failure, uses an exponential back-off algorithm. On intial failure, the handler will drop the message it was trying to send. When subsequent messages are handled by the same instance, it will not try connecting until some time has passed. The default parameters are such that the initial delay is one second, and if after that delay the connection still can’t be made, the handler will double the delay each time up to a maximum of 30 seconds.

This behaviour is controlled by the following handler attributes:

  • retryStart (initial delay, defaulting to 1.0 seconds).
  • retryFactor (multiplier, defaulting to 2.0).
  • retryMax (maximum delay, defaulting to 30.0 seconds).

This means that if the remote listener starts up after the handler has been used, you could lose messages (since the handler won’t even attempt a connection until the delay has elapsed, but just silently drop messages during the delay period).

15.9.8. 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.

15.9.9. 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=('localhost', SYSLOG_UDP_PORT), facility=LOG_USER, socktype=socket.SOCK_DGRAM)

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.

Note that if your server is not listening on UDP port 514, SysLogHandler may appear not to work. In that case, check what address you should be using for a domain socket - it’s system dependent. For example, on Linux it’s usually ‘/dev/log’ but on OS/X it’s ‘/var/run/syslog’. You’ll need to check your platform and use the appropriate address (you may need to do this check at runtime if your application needs to run on several platforms). On Windows, you pretty much have to use the UDP option.

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’.

15.9.10. 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=None, logtype='Application')

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.

15.9.11. 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=None, secure=None)

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.

To specify the use of a secure protocol (TLS), pass in a tuple to the secure argument. This will only be used when authentication credentials are supplied. The tuple should be either an empty tuple, or a single-value tuple with the name of a keyfile, or a 2-value tuple with the names of the keyfile and certificate file. (This tuple is passed to the smtplib.SMTP.starttls() method.)

Changed in version 2.6: credentials was added.

Changed in version 2.7: secure 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.

15.9.12. 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 flushing.

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=ERROR, target=None)

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. The buffer is also cleared when this happens. 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.

15.9.13. 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='GET')

Returns a new instance of the HTTPHandler class. The host can be of the form host:port, should you need to use a specific port number.

mapLogRecord(record)

Provides a dictionary, based on record, which is to be URL-encoded and sent to the web server. The default implementation just returns record.__dict__. This method can be overridden if e.g. only a subset of LogRecord is to be sent to the web server, or if more specific customization of what’s sent to the server is required.

emit(record)

Sends the record to the Web server as an URL-encoded dictionary. The mapLogRecord() method is used to convert the record to the dictionary to be sent.

Note

Since preparing a record for sending it to a Web server is not the same as a generic formatting operation, using setFormatter() to specify a Formatter for a HTTPHandler has no effect. Instead of calling format(), this handler calls mapLogRecord() and then urllib.urlencode() to encode the dictionary in a form suitable for sending to a Web server.

See also

Module logging
API reference for the logging module.
Module logging.config
Configuration API for the logging module.