objgraph 2.0.1

Draws Python object reference graphs with graphviz

Python Object Graphs

objgraph is a module that lets you visually explore Python object graphs.

You’ll need graphviz if you want to draw the pretty graphs.

I recommend xdot for interactive use. pip install xdot should suffice; objgraph will automatically look for it in your PATH.

Installation and Documentation

pip install objgraph or download it from PyPI.

Documentation lives at http://mg.pov.lt/objgraph.

History

I’ve developed a set of functions that eventually became objgraph when I was hunting for memory leaks in a Python program. The whole story – with illustrated examples – is in this series of blog posts:

• Hunting memory leaks in Python

• Python object graphs

• Object graphs with graphviz

Support and Development

The source code can be found in this Git repository: https://github.com/mgedmin/objgraph.

To check it out, use git clone https://github.com/mgedmin/objgraph.

Report bugs at https://github.com/mgedmin/objgraph/issues.

Changes

2.0.1 (2015-07-28)

• Avoid creating reference cycles between the stack frame and the local objects variable in by_type, count, and typestats.

  Fixes issue 22. Contributed by Erik Bray.

2.0.0 (2015-04-18)

• show_refs and show_backrefs now accept a file-like object (via the new output argument) as an alternative to a filename.

• Made internal helper methods private. This includes find_chain, show_graph, obj_node_id, obj_label, quote, long_typename, safe_repr, short_repr, gradient, edge_label, and _program_in_path.

• Correctly determine the name of old-style classes in count, by_type, and graph drawing functions.

  Fixes issue 16. Contributed by Mike Lambert.

1.8.1 (2014-05-15)

• Do not expect file objects to have an encoding attribute. Makes objgraph compatible with Eventlet’s monkey-patching.

  Fixes issue 6. Contributed by Jakub Stasiak.

1.8.0 (2014-02-13)

• Moved to GitHub.

• Python 3.4 support (LP#1270872).

• New function: is_proper_module.

• New shortnames argument for typestats, most_common_types, show_most_common_types, show_growth, show_refs, and show_backrefs.

  count and by_type accept fully-qualified type names now.

  Fixes issue 4.

1.7.2 (2012-10-23)

• Bugfix: setup.py sdist was broken on Python 2.7 (UnicodeDecodeError in tarfile).

• The filename argument for show_refs and show_backrefs now allows arbitrary image formats, not just PNG. Patch by Riccardo Murri.

• Temporary dot files are now named objgraph-*.dot instead of tmp*.dot.

• Python 3.3 support: no code changes, but some tests started failing because the new and improved dictionary implementation no longer holds references to str objects used as dict keys.

• Added a tox.ini for convenient multi-Python testing.

1.7.1 (2011-12-11)

• Bugfix: non-ASCII characters in object representations would break graph generation on Python 3.x, in some locales (e.g. with LC_ALL=C). Reported and fixed by Stefano Rivera.

• Bugfix: setup.py was broken on Python 3.x

• Bugfix: dot.exe/xdot.exe were not found on Windows (LP#767239).

• Documentation updates: document the forgotten find_ref_chain, update show_chain prototype.

1.7.0 (2011-03-11)

• New function: find_ref_chain.

• New backrefs argument for show_chain.

• New function: get_leaking_objects, based on a blog post by Kristján Valur.

• New objects argument for count, typestats, most_common_types, show_most_common_types, and by_type.

• Edges pointing to function attributes such as __defaults__ or __globals__ are now labeled.

• Edge labels that are not simple strings now show the type.

• Bugfix: ‘0’ and other unsafe characters used in a dictionary key could break graph generation.

• Bugfix: show_refs(…, filename=’graph.dot’) would then go to complain about unrecognized file types and then produce a png.

1.6.0 (2010-12-18)

• Python 3 support, thanks to Stefano Rivera (fixes LP#687601).

• Removed weird weakref special-casing.

1.5.1 (2010-12-09)

• Avoid test failures in uncollectable-garbage.txt (fixes LP#686731).

• Added HACKING.txt (later renamed to HACKING.rst).

1.5.0 (2010-12-05)

• Show frame objects as well (fixes LP#361704).

• New functions: show_growth, show_chain.

• find_backref_chain returns [obj] instead of None when a chain could not be found. This makes show_chain(find_backref_chain(...), ...) not break.

• Show how many references were skipped from the output of show_refs/show_backrefs by specifying too_many.

• Make show_refs descend into modules.

• Do not highlight classes that define a __del__, highlight only instances of those classes.

• Option to show reference counts in show_refs/show_backrefs.

• Add Sphinx documentation and a PyPI long description.

1.4.0 (2010-11-03)

• Compatibility with Python 2.4 and 2.5 (tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile has no delete argument).

• New function: most_common_types.

1.3.1 (2010-07-17)

• Rebuild an sdist with no missing files (fixes LP#606604).

• Added MANIFEST.in and a Makefile to check that setup.py sdist generates source distributions with no files missing.

1.3 (2010-07-13)

• Highlight objects with a __del__ method.

• Fixes LP#483411: suggest always passing [obj] to show_refs, show_backrefs, since obj might be a list/tuple.

• Fixes LP#514422: show_refs, show_backrefs don’t create files in the current working directory any more. Instead they accept a filename argument, which can be a .dot file or a .png file. If None or not specified, those functions will try to spawn xdot as before.

• New extra_info argument to graph-generating functions (patch by Thouis Jones, LP#558914).

• setup.py should work with distutils now (LP#604430, thanks to Randy Heydon).

1.2 (2009-03-25)

• Project website, public source repository, uploaded to PyPI.

• No code changes.

1.1 (2008-09-10)

• New function: show_refs for showing forward references.

• New functions: typestats and show_most_common_types.

• Object boxes are less crammed with useless information (such as IDs).

• Spawns xdot if it is available.

1.0 (2008-06-14)

• First public release.