Configuring Output

This part discusses how to configure twiggy’s output of messages. You should do this once, near the start of your application’s __main__. It’s particularly important to set up Twiggy before spawning new processes.

Quick Setup

quick_setup() quickly configures output with reasonable defaults. Use it when you don’t need a lot of customizability or as the default configuration that the user can override via programatic configuration or dict_config().

The defaults will emit log messages of DEBUG level or higher to stderr:

from twiggy import quick_setup
quick_setup()

See also

The API docs for complete information on quick_setup()’s parameters.

twiggy_setup.py

Twiggy’s output side features modern, loosely coupled design. The easiest way to understand what that means is to look at how to configure twiggy programmatically.

Note

Prior to Twiggy 0.5, by convention twiggy was programmatically set up in a separate file in your application called twiggy_setup.py in a function called twiggy_setup(). This allowed sites to override the configuration via their configuration management systems by replacing the file. In Twiggy 0.5 and later, the dict_config() function provides a more natural way for to allow users to override the logging configuration using a config file.

Programmatically configuring Twiggy involves creating an output which defines where the log messages will be sent and then creating an Emitter which associates a subset of your application’s logs with the output. Here’s what an example twiggy_setup() function would look like:

from twiggy import add_emitters, outputs, levels, filters, formats, emitters # import * is also ok
def twiggy_setup():
    alice_output = outputs.FileOutput("alice.log", format=formats.line_format)
    bob_output = outputs.FileOutput("bob.log", format=formats.line_format)

    add_emitters(
        # (name, min_level, filter, output),
        ("alice", levels.DEBUG, None, alice_output),
        ("betty", levels.INFO, filters.names("betty"), bob_output),
        ("brian.*", levels.DEBUG, filters.glob_names("brian.*"), bob_output),
        )

# near the top of your __main__
twiggy_setup()

In this example, we create two log Outputs: alice_output and bob_output. These outputs are twiggy.outputs.FileOutput`s.  They tell twiggy to write messages directed to the output into the named file, in this case, ``alice.log` and bob.log. All outputs have a formatter associated with them. The formatter is responsible for turning Twiggy’s Structured Logging calls into a suitable form for the output. In this example, both alice_output and bob_output use twiggy.formats.line_format() to format their messages.

Emitters associate Outputs with a set of messages via levels and Filtering Output. Here we configure three emitters to two outputs. alice_output will receive all messages and bob_output will receive two sets of messages:

  • messages with the name field equal to betty and level >= INFO
  • messages with the name field glob-matching brian.*

The convenience function, add_emitters(), takes the emitter information as a tuple of emitter name, minimum log level, optional filters, and the output that the logs should be written to. It creates the Emitters from that information and populates the emitters dictionary:

>>> sorted(emitters.keys())
['alice', 'betty', 'brian.*']

Emitters can be removed by deleting them from this dict. filter and min_level may be modified during the running of the application, but outputs cannot be changed. Instead, remove the emitter and re-add it.

>>> # bump level
... emitters['alice'].min_level = levels.WARNING
>>> # change filter
... emitters['alice'].filter = filters.names('alice', 'andy')
>>> # remove entirely
... del emitters['alice']

We’ll examine the various parts in more detail below.

Note

Remember to import and run twiggy_setup near the top of your application.

Outputs

Outputs are the destinations to which log messages are written (files, databases, etc.). Several implementations are provided. Once created, outputs cannot be modified. Each output has an associated format.

Asynchronous Logging

Many outputs can be configured to use a separate, dedicated process to log messages. This is known as asynchronous logging and is enabled with the msg_buffer argument. Asynchronous mode dramatically reduces the cost of logging, as expensive formatting and writing operations are moved out of the main thread of control.

Formats

Formats transform a log message into a form that can be written by an output. The result of formatting is output dependent; for example, an output that posts to an HTTP server may take a format that provides JSON, whereas an output that writes to a file may produce text.

Line-oriented formatting

LineFormat formats messages for text-oriented outputs such as a file or standard error. It uses a ConversionTable to stringify the arbitrary fields in a message. To customize, copy the default line_format and modify:

# in your twiggy_setup
import copy
my_format = copy.copy(formats.line_format)
my_format.conversion.add(key = 'address', # name of the field
                         convert_value = hex, # gets original value
                         convert_item = "{0}={1}".format, # gets called with: key, converted_value
                         required = True)

# output messages with name 'memory' to stderr
add_emitters(('memory', levels.DEBUG, filters.names('memory'), outputs.StreamOutput(format = my_format)))

Filtering Output

The messages output by an emitter are determined by its min_level and filter (a function which take a Message and returns bool). These attributes may be changed while the application is running. The filter attribute of emitters is intelligent; you may assign strings, bools or functions and it will magically do the right thing. Assigning a list indicates that all of the filters must pass for the message to be output.

e = emitters['memory']
e.min_level = levels.WARNING
# True allows all messages through (None works as well)
e.filter = True
# False blocks all messages
e.filter = False
# Strings are interpreted as regexes (regex objects ok too)
e.filter = "^mem.*y$"
# functions are passed the message; return True to emit
e.filter = lambda msg: msg.fields['address'] > 0xDECAF
# lists are all()'d
e.filter = ["^mem.y$", lambda msg: msg.fields['address'] > 0xDECAF]

See also

Available filters

dict_config()

Twiggy 0.5 features a new convenience method, dict_config() for configuring Emitters that takes a a dictionary with the configuration information. The dictionary can be constructed programmatically, loaded from a configuration file, or hardcoded into an application. This allows the programmer to easily set defaults and allow the user to override those from a configuration file. Here’s an example:

from twiggy import dict_config

twiggy_config = {'version': '1.0',
                 'outputs': {
                    'alice_output': {
                        'output': 'twiggy.outputs.FileOutput',
                        'args': ['alice.log']
                    },
                    'bob_output': {
                        'output': 'twiggy.outputs.FileOutput',
                        'args': ['bob.log'],
                        'format': 'twiggy.formats.line_format'
                    }
                 },
                 'emitters': {
                    'alice': {
                        'level': 'DEBUG',
                        'output_name': 'alice_output'
                    },
                    'betty': {
                        'level': 'INFO',
                        'filters': [ {
                            'filter': 'twiggy.filters.names',
                            'args': ['betty']
                            }
                        ],
                        'output_name': 'bob_output'
                    },
                    'brian.*': {
                        'level': 'DEBUG',
                        'filters': [ {
                            'filter': 'twiggy.filters.glob_names',
                            'args': ['brian.*']
                            }
                        ],
                        'output_name': 'bob_output'
                    }
                }
            }

dict_config(twiggy_config)

In this example, the programmer creates a twiggy configuration in the application’s code and uses it to configure twiggy. The configuration closely mirrors the objects that were created in the twiggy_setup.py section. The outputs field contains definitions of alice_output and bob_output that write to the alice.log and bob.log files respectively. The emitters field defines three emitters, their levels and filters to output to the

The configuration should be done near the start of your application. It’s particularly important to set up Twiggy before spawning new processes.

With this configuration, twiggy.dict_config() will create two log destinations (Outputs): alice.log and bob.log. These Outputs are then associated with the set of messages that they will receive in the emitters section. alice.log will receive all messages and bob.log will receive two sets of messages:

  • messages with the name field equal to betty and level >= INFO
  • messages with the name field glob-matching brian.*

See the Twiggy Config Schema documentation for details of what each of the fields in the configuration dictionary mean.

User Overrides

Each site that runs an application is likely to have different logging needs. Using dict_config it is easy to let the user override the configuration specified by the program. For instance, the application could have a yaml configuration file with a logging_config section:

import yaml
config = yaml.safe_load('config_file.yml')
if 'logging_config' in config:
    try:
        twiggy.dict_config(config['logging_config'])
    except Exception as e:
        print('User provided logging configuration was flawed: {0}'.format(e))

Twiggy Config Schema

The dict taken by twiggy.dict_config() may contain the following keys:

version
Set to the value representing the schema version as a string. Currently, the only valid value is “1.0”.
incremental
(Optional) If True, the dictionary will update any existing configuration. If False, this will override any existing configuration. This allows user defined logging configuration to decide whether to override the logging configuration set be the application or merely supplement it. The default is False.
outputs

(Optional) Mapping of output names to outputs. Outputs consist of

output
A twiggy.outputs.Output or the string representation with which to import a Output. For instance, to use the builtin, twiggy.outputs.FileOutput either set output directly to the class or the string twiggy.outputs.FileOutput.
args
(Optional) A list of arguments to pass to the Twiggy.outputs.Output class constructor. For instance, FileOutput takes the filename of a file to log to. So args could be set to: ["logfile.log"].
kwargs
(Optional) A dict of keyword arguments to pass to the Twiggy.outputs.Output class constructor. For instance, StreamOutput takes a stream as a keyword argument so kwargs could be set to: {"stream": "ext://sys.stdout"}.
format
(Optional) A formatter function which transforms the log message for the output. This can either be a string name of the formatter of the formatter itself. The default is twiggy.formats.line_format()

If both outputs and emitters are None and incremental is False then twiggy.emitters will be cleared.

emitters

(Optional) Mapping of emitter names to emitters. Emitters consist of:

level
String name of the log level at which log messages will be passed to this emitter. May be one of (In order of severity) CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, NOTICE, INFO, DEBUG, DISABLED.
output_name
The name of an output in this configuration dict.
filters

(Optional) A list of filters which filter out messages which will go to this emitter. Each filter is a mapping which consists of:

filter
Name for a twiggy filter function. This can either be a string name for the function or the function itself.
args
(Optional) A list of arguments to pass to the Twiggy.outputs.Output class constructor. For instance, FileOutput takes the filename of a file to log to. So args could be set to: ["logfile.log"].
kwargs
(Optional) A dict of keyword arguments to pass to the Twiggy.outputs.Output class constructor. For instance, StreamOutput takes a stream as a keyword argument so kwargs could be set to: {"stream": "ext://sys.stdout"}.

If both emitters and output are None and incremental is False then twiggy.emitters will be cleared.

Sometimes you want to have an entry in args or kwargs that is a python object. For instance, StreamOutput takes a stream keyword argument so you may want to give sys.stdout to it. If you are building the configuration dictionary in Python code you can simply use the actual object. However, if you are writing in a text configuration file, you can specify existing objects by prefixing the string with ext://. When Twiggy sees that the string starts with ext:// it will strip off the prefix and then try to import an object with the rest of the name.

Here’s an example config that you might find in a YAML config file:

version: '1.0'
outputs:
    alice_output:
        output: 'twiggy.outputs.FileOutput'
        args:
            - 'alice.log'
    bob_output:
        output: 'twiggy.outputs.StreamOutput'
        kwargs:
            stream: 'ext://sys.stdout'
        format: 'twiggy.formats.line_format'
emitters:
    alice:
        level: 'DEBUG'
        output_name: 'alice_output'
    betty:
        level: 'INFO'
        filters:
            filter: 'twiggy.filters.names'
            args:
                - 'betty'
        output_name: 'bob_output'
    brian.*:
        levels: 'DEBUG'
        filters:
            filter: 'twiggy.filters.glob_names'
            args:
                -'brian.*'
        output_name: 'bob_output'