timbermafia 0.1.0

Package that makes implementing good-looking and flexible logging easy.

timbermafia

timbermafia is a python package that makes implementing good-looking and flexible logging easy.

Setting up your existing logging to stdout, with fixed-width columns and printout over multiple lines, is as easy as placing the following in your script or top-level application module:

import timbermafia as tm
tm.basic_config()

timbermafia is built on python's logging module, so plugs in to any python application that uses logging seamlessly.

Installation

timbermafia is available on the Python Package Index (PyPI).

pip install timbermafia

It requires python version 3.6 or later.

Features

timbermafia implements a formatter with the following features:

• vertically aligned, column-based output, with adaptively allocated and tweakable widths.
• output over aligned, multiple lines, with truncation support for fields to fit into a single line.
• an expanded fmt_spec for the logging format, allowing for log record fields to be formatted individually with 8-bit ANSI colours and formats.
• colourised and formatted output for each different logging level.
• a variety of pre-configured styles and colour palettes.

Try it out!

Once installed with pip, a script called demo_timbermafia is placed in the user's bin. The user can specify a style, colour palette, and logging format to be used:

The available styles and colour palettes can be shown with

import timbermafia as tm
tm.print_styles()
tm.print_palettes()

Once you've found a style and palette you like, you can configure this in your script or application with something like:

import timbermafia as tm
import sys
tm.basic_config(style="compact", palette="dawn",
                stream=sys.stdout,      
                filename="/tmp/my_output.log",
                format="{asctime:u} _| {threadName} {name} {funcName} __>> {message}",
                datefmt="%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S")

and you can get output like this from your existing logging calls:

For information on the full functionality of timbermafia.basic_config, which is very analogous to logging.basicConfig, use python's help function on it.

Formats

timbermafia expands what is possible in a logging format, adding support for a variety of features.

Vertically-aligned columns.

The user can specify columns to be used in the output, which for long messages, names, function names etc. can be used to print legible multi-line output.

The column widths adapt based on what fields are present in them, so columns containing a high amount of output get more room.

An example format using 4 columns, containing respectively the:

• date/time
• level name
• process name and log name
• log message

can be specified with a column escape, by default "_". Whatever follows the column escape until the next whitespace is registered as output that will visually separate the column.

So our format can be e.g.

{asctime} _| {levelname} _| {processName} {name}  __:: {message}

which produces the following output with the "synth" colour palette:

Note that we double-escape the final separator so that it prints over all lines of multi-line output, and that multiple characters, or indeed no characters, can be used as a column separator.

Enhanced fmt_spec

Individual log records can be formatted according to a format specification, or fmt_spec.

For example, the following output will force the message content to be bold and bright green, overriding any formatting based upon the log level, and underline the time to punctuate the start of a new log record:

{asctime:u} _ {name} _ {message:b,>82}

Let's try that out with the "ocean" palette:

The following are recognised in the format spec via a comma-separated list:

• b: bold
• e: emphasis/italic
• u: underline
• any int: the corresponding ANSI code, e.g. 5,9 will set slow blink and crossed-out text
• >int: set the foreground colour to the 8-bit colour code.
• <int: set the background colour to the 8-bit colour code.

Note that what ANSI codes will be possible is dependent on what terminal or terminal emulator is being used.

A full list of the ANSI colour codes matched to some sample output can be printed to the terminal with the included script display_ansi_colours.

Custom styles and palettes

Each style and palette can be generated into a Style or Palette object, with a flexible customisation supported.

A full guide to customising styles and palettes can be found in this notebook.