django-watch 0.6.1

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

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': ['[e-mail]']}>
  🔵 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

Phase	Information
Before view	HTTP method, source file, view function, line number
Request data	args, kwargs, GET, POST, raw body (truncated)
Request headers	Authorization (masked), Content-Type, Accept, X-Requested-With
After view	Status code, total time, response size and Content-Type
Response headers	Content-Type, Location, Cache-Control, Set-Cookie, X-Frame-Options
SQL	Query count, total query time, duplicate query count (N+1 detection)
Memory	RSS delta before/after view
On exception	Full Python traceback with ❌ marker

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