fireflask 0.2.0

Simple, beautiful logging from Flask web apps to FireBug console

fireflask

I’ve long wanted to use FirePython for debugging Flask web apps, but could never seem to get it working right.

After a long time away, I circled back to it, and with help from the Flask folks, got it working smoothly.

Indeed, it was so simple to do, knowing the right invocation and configuration, that I can only blame myself for not getting it earlier. My only consolation is that there is no real documentation (the usage link on FireLogger’s home page is a dead link).

So, having figured it out, I’m sharing in the hopes that others can now simply use this beautiful tool.

Basic Idea

The code is sufficiently simple I can put the core of it here:

from flask import Flask
from logging import DEBUG
from firepython.middleware import FirePythonWSGI, logging

app = Flask('appname')
app.wsgi_app = FirePythonWSGI(app.wsgi_app)
logging.getLogger().setLevel(DEBUG)

That’s it. Now you’re off to the races. When the app server is run, any logging messages you direct to the logging object end up in your FireBug / FireLogger console. More complete versions of this demo code can be found in trivial.py and demo_primitive.py in the repository.

FireFlask

To make things even simpler, the fireflask module requires just two lines of code (one to import fireflask, and one to put it into operation).

from flask import Flask
from fireflask import *

app = Flask('appname')
FireFlask(app)

@app.route('/')
def hello_world():

    logging.info('serving hello_world content')
    return 'Hello World!'

app.run()

Here we’ve completed the program with a function that provides content, and the startup code for the Flask web server. fireflask isn’t a huge lines-of-code savings, but it will save you a few steps and make the program cleaner.

Notes

• This has been tested under Python 2.7. No promises are made for other versions of Python.

• The author, Jonathan Eunice or @jeunice on Twitter welcomes your comments and suggestions.

Installation

To install or upgrade to the latest version of fireflask:

pip install -U fireflask

This will install the firepython module automatically. Or, if you want to use just the primitive approach:

pip install -U firepython

(You may need to prefix these with sudo to authorize installation.)

Use the standard Firefox tools to install FireBug and the FireLogger extension.

Use

To run the demonstration programs, run trivial.py, demo_primitive.py or demo.py.

Browse to 127.0.0.1:5000 in Firefox, with the FireBug extension turned on, and the Logger pane visible. This is the FireBug icon:

When FireBug is operational, it’s displayed in color, not grayed out. If you browse to the page before FireBug is turned on, you’ll need to reload the page to see the logged messages.