Django logging
==============
Date: **2012-01-15**

.. note:: **2016-06-29** - I'll be writing an updated version of this post very soon.

I frequently write small APIs using a python web framework called django, but when making test calls to the API with curl (or even urllib2) getting the massive DEBUG=True exception page back can be pain. So by using the logging framework you can set DEBUG to False and watch for your exceptions in a log. Here's how:

1. Set DEBUG to False in your settings.py file:
-----------------------------------------------

.. code:: python

    DEBUG=False


2. Update the logging section in settings.py:
---------------------------------------------

.. code:: python

    APPHOME="/home/pfarmer/projectname"

    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'disable_existing_loggers': True,
        'formatters': {
            'standard': {
                'format': '%(asctime)s [%(levelname)s] %(name)s: %(message)s'
            },
        },
        'handlers': {
            'default': {
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'class':'logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler',
                'filename': '%s/logs/default.log' % APPHOME,
                'maxBytes': 1024*1024*5, # 5 MB
                'backupCount': 5,
                'formatter':'standard',
            },
            'request_handler': {
                    'level':'DEBUG',
                    'class':'logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler',
                    'filename': '%s/logs/django_request.log' % APPHOME,
                    'maxBytes': 1024*1024*5, # 5 MB
                    'backupCount': 5,
                    'formatter':'standard',
            },
        },
        'loggers': {
            '': {
                'handlers': ['default'],
                'level': 'DEBUG',
                'propagate': True
            },
            'django.request': { # Stop SQL debug from logging to main logger
                'handlers': ['request_handler'],
                'level': 'DEBUG',
                'propagate': False
            },
        }
    }


Now when some code causes an exception, the traceback should appear in <span class="bold">django_request.log</span>

3. Make sure you have a 500.html template in place.
---------------------------------------------------

4. The added bonus....
----------------------

The added bonus is you can use the standard python logging module to log during view execution, add the following to each of your views.py:

.. code:: python

    import logging
    log = logging.getLogger(__name__)


5. Then use code like this to log messages:
-------------------------------------------

.. code:: python

    log.debug("API login attempt for %s" request.GET['user'])


This will appear in the log like this:::

    2011-11-16 23:02:32,339 [DEBUG] api.views: API login attempt for pfarmer