Re: Proposal: Logging system rewrite

On Mar 31, 2005 8:33 PM, Steven Armstrong <[email protected]> wrote:
> As I've once posted a while ago I'm not happy with how logging currently
> works. So I'ld like to propose the change described below.
> 
> Problem
> -------
> 
> Every new call to tools.make_logger 'hijackes' the tools.log function
> and points it to another file. The plugin loaded last wins and gets its
> message logged to the file it specified. Messages of all other plugins
> also end up in this file.
> 
> Proposal
> --------
> 
> Use only one logfile for pyblosxom and it's plugins. The path to this
> file should be set in config.py.
> e.g:
> py['log_file'] = "/tmp/pyblosxom.log"
> 
> Optionally allow a plugin to create it's own logfile by passing a full
> path to the function/method/whatever that creates and returns the
> logger. This can be handy for development.
> 
> The loglevel can be set in config.py, e.g:
> py['log_level'] = "debug"
> 
> A log-record would be formatted like:
> 
> DATETIME [LOGLEVEL] PLUGINNAME: MESSAGE
> 
> e.g.:
> 2004-02-12 12:43:22 [INFO] COMMENTS: failed special number check--spam.
> 2004-02-12 12:45:25 [INFO] CACHE: rebuilding the index cache.
> 2004-02-12 12:46:26 [INFO] COMMENTS: comment posted.
> 2004-02-12 12:47:27 [ERROR] COMMENTS: Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "/home/willg/plpy/public_html/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi", line 53, in ?
>   p.run()
> File "/home/willg/pyblosxom/Pyblosxom/pyblosxom.py", line 128, in run
>   blosxom_handler(self._request)
> File "/home/willg/pyblosxom/Pyblosxom/pyblosxom.py", line 719, in
>   blosxom_handler
>   renderer.render()
> File "/home/willg/blogdata/plugins/rss2renderer.py", line 197, in render
>   self._createItem(self._content[count])
> 
> Available loglevels are:
> 'FATAL', 'CRITICAL', 'ERROR', 'WARN', 'WARNING', 'INFO', 'DEBUG', 'NOTSET'
> 
> API
> ---
> 
> Get a logger instance:
> log = tools.getLogger()
> 
> The getLogger function automatically detects the calling plugins name
> and uses that as PLUGINNAME.
> 
> Get a logger instance with its own logfile:
> log = tools.getLogger(log_file="/path/to/logfile")
> 
> If used like this, PLUGINNAME is ignored.
> 
> Using the logger:
> log.info("Wabadabadu")
> log.debug("variable = %s, variable2 = %r", var1, var2)
> log.error("ups I did it again")
> log.error("ups I did it again", exc_info=True)
> 
> For each loglevel there exists a corresponding method.
> The logger substitutes variables 2 to n into variable 1.
> Passing exc_info=True causes the logger to also log the traceback along
> with the given message.
> 
> Log an exception:
> try:
>   ...
> except FunkyException:
>   tools.log_exception()
> 
> This is just a shorhand for
> log.error("Exception occured", exc_info=True).
> 
> Problems
> --------
> 
> How does the tools modules get access to the config dict?
> 
> Notes
> -----
> 
> A while back I've been mailing with Will about all this. The ideas to
> log to just one file and how to format a log-message are his.
> 
> With Python 2.3 it's a piece of cake to implement the above. Most of the
> used functionality is provided through the built in logging module.
> I've written a minimal Logger class that provides the needed
> functionality for older Python installations.
> The code to make this happen is actually allready written. Just needs a
> minor rewrite.
> 
> I'ld really like to have this in CVS as soon as possible. I'm getting
> sick of comenting/uncomenting resp. adding/removing debug statements all
> over the place.
> 
> What say you?
> 
> Ideas? Improvements?
> 
> cheers
> Steven
> 

Question: how do you properly handle the event where the user doesn't
have a logfile specified in config.py or the specified file doesn't
exist/can't be written to? Intuitively, I would say discard all log
messages - but how does a user figure out that they have the security
wrong on a log file, or that they've misspelled the name? Maybe it
just shouldn't initialize with a bad value?

But, that said, absolutely +1. When I develop, I have a very hackish
system to do, basically, this.

Peace
Bill Mill
bill.mill at gmail.com

+1


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