Python Language Logging Logging exceptions
Example
If you want to log exceptions you can and should make use of the logging.exception(msg) method:
>>> import logging
>>> logging.basicConfig()
>>> try:
... raise Exception('foo')
... except:
... logging.exception('bar')
...
ERROR:root:bar
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
Exception: foo
Do not pass the exception as argument:
As logging.exception(msg) expects a msg arg, it is a common pitfall to pass the exception into the logging call like this:
>>> try:
... raise Exception('foo')
... except Exception as e:
... logging.exception(e)
...
ERROR:root:foo
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
Exception: foo
While it might look as if this is the right thing to do at first, it is actually problematic due to the reason how exceptions and various encoding work together in the logging module:
>>> try:
... raise Exception(u'föö')
... except Exception as e:
... logging.exception(e)
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py", line 861, in emit
msg = self.format(record)
File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py", line 734, in format
return fmt.format(record)
File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py", line 469, in format
s = self._fmt % record.__dict__
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 1-2: ordinal not in range(128)
Logged from file <stdin>, line 4
Trying to log an exception that contains unicode chars, this way will fail miserably. It will hide the stacktrace of the original exception by overriding it with a new one that is raised during formatting of your logging.exception(e) call.
Obviously, in your own code, you might be aware of the encoding in exceptions. However, 3rd party libs might handle this in a different way.
Correct Usage:
If instead of the exception you just pass a message and let python do its magic, it will work:
>>> try:
... raise Exception(u'föö')
... except Exception as e:
... logging.exception('bar')
...
ERROR:root:bar
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
Exception: f\xf6\xf6
As you can see we don't actually use e in that case, the call to logging.exception(...) magically formats the most recent exception.
Logging exceptions with non ERROR log levels
If you want to log an exception with another log level than ERROR, you can use the the exc_info argument of the default loggers:
logging.debug('exception occurred', exc_info=1)
logging.info('exception occurred', exc_info=1)
logging.warning('exception occurred', exc_info=1)
Accessing the exception's message
Be aware that libraries out there might throw exceptions with messages as any of unicode or (utf-8 if you're lucky) byte-strings. If you really need to access an exception's text, the only reliable way, that will always work, is to use repr(e) or the %r string formatting:
>>> try:
... raise Exception(u'föö')
... except Exception as e:
... logging.exception('received this exception: %r' % e)
...
ERROR:root:received this exception: Exception(u'f\xf6\xf6',)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
Exception: f\xf6\xf6
