slog 0.5.2

A simple logging library

Slog is a simple logging framework named after the adverb some people use to describe the task of integrating logging into their projects.

I decided to throw this together a while back as a replacement for Python’s default logger, which is unweildy and completely overkill in small projects, and not as noob-friendly as it could be. I then stopped maintaining it because of an influx of other responsibilities.

Syntax is simple enough; instantiate the Slog class and you’re basically ready to go.

>>> from slog.slog import Slog
>>> log = Slog(loglvl=5)
>>> for lvl in ['ok', 'info', 'warn', 'fail', 'crit']: getattr(log, lvl)('Testing!')
...
2016-08-18 05:29:09 || [  OK  ] ⬢  Testing me a slog
2016-08-18 05:29:09 || [ INFO ] ⬢  Testing me a slog
2016-08-18 05:29:09 || [ WARN ] ⬢  Testing me a slog
2016-08-18 05:29:09 || [ FAIL ] ⬢  Testing me a slog
2016-08-18 05:29:09 || [ CRIT ] ⬢  Testing me a slog
>>>

That snippet is a comprehensive example of Slog’s essential API.

(n.b. the coloured splotches don’t go into the logfile – they just show up in the terminal during live logging for readability at a glance.)

The Slog class takes two optional parameters: the name of the logfile (defaults to None) and the logging level ([0..5], defaults to 3). If the latter gets a parameter outside of that range, it’ll default to 3.

The levels correspond to:

• 5 => log everything everywhere

• 4 => log only info and higher (skips ok)

• 3 => log only warn and higher (skips ok and info)

• 2 => log only fail and higher (skips ok, info, and warn)

• 1 => log only crit

• 0 => turn off logging completely on all channels

Writing a log entry is as simple as calling log.<level>() (with log an instance of Slog) with <level> being one of ok, info, warn, fail, or crit. Each of these functions takes exactly one argument.

Because I want to retain the ability to create arbirary custom messages, I’ve kept a modified write method - use it as log.write(message, level, color). This adds even more flexibility taking int account that color can be any colour supported by the termcolor package.

Installing slog

For Python 3:

$ pip3 install slog
$ # or, depending on your aliases
$ pip install slog

For Python 2 (only 2.7 tested):

$ pip install slog

New stuff in this re-release

• Python 3 support (finally). Not sure why this wasn’t built-in initially, but it is now. Install via pip3 at your leisure.

• A bit of code cleanup.

• Semver instead of… whatever I was using before. That was a mess.

Extending and modifying slog ==

It’s a single-file, 70ish-line module, so I didn’t build in a plugin architecture, and I’m not planning on it. Slog’s under an MIT license, though, so go wild modifying it.

For example, you could swap out the ct() function, which returns the current time, with a different time format. You could just rebind the slog.slog.ct function object to one you defined for a drop-in replacement.

In an upcoming release (probably before September, 2016), I plan to add better support for message formatting. Until then, I tried to go for something good-looking, and which clearly conveys the severity, time, and message.

I haven’t done any testing to help adapt this default theme to devleopers with colourblindness for lack of resources and expertise; I’d be greatly appreciative of any input from this part of the community to try and optimize it for at least the more common types of colourblindness.

Please report any issues to the GitHub issue tracker at github.com/verandaguy/slog/issues.

Acknowledgements (from way back, before the re-release)

• Reddit user /u/pujuma for helping fix issue #1

• Reddit user /u/grundee for providing feedback about the API