django-watch

Lightweight Django middleware for real-time request logging during development.

Prints the resolved view's source file, function name, line number, HTTP status, SQL stats, memory usage, and wall-clock timing straight to your terminal — no extra configuration required.

Each request/response pair is colour-coded with a matching emoji so nested or interleaved requests are easy to follow at a glance.

Installation

pip install django-watch

Quick start

Add the middleware at the end of your settings.py:

if DEBUG:
    INSTALLED_APPS += ("django_watch",)
    MIDDLEWARE += ("django_watch.middleware.WatchMiddleware",)

Open your development console and you will see output like this:

🟢 GET main/views.py • profile • Line 191
  🟢 kwargs: {'username': 'sobolev'}
  🟢 headers: Content-Type: text/html | Accept: */*
🟢 GET main/views.py • profile [  OK  ] • STATUS 200 • 0.12s • SQL 5q/0.03s • 1 dupes • 2.4KB text/html • mem Δ+128KB
  🟢 response headers: Content-Type: text/html | Cache-Control: max-age=0

🔵 POST main/views.py • login • Line 42
  🔵 request.POST: <QueryDict: {'email': ['user@example.com']}>
  🔵 headers: Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
🔵 POST main/views.py • login [  OK  ] • STATUS 302 • 0.05s • SQL 2q/0.01s • 0B text/html
  🔵 response headers: Location: /dashboard/

🟣 GET main/views.py • dashboard • Line 80
🟣 GET main/views.py • dashboard [  OK  ] • STATUS 200 • 0.31s • SQL 8q/0.09s • 3 dupes • 12.1KB text/html
  🟣 response headers: Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Colours and emoji rotate automatically: 🟢 🔵 🟣 🩵 ⚪ 💚 💙 💜 — red is reserved for exceptions.

What it logs

Running tests

uv sync
uv run pytest

The test suite uses an in-memory SQLite database and covers the full middleware chain: view resolution logging, SQL query counting with duplicate detection, request header output, response metadata, emoji rotation, and exception tracebacks.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Django 3.2+

License

MIT