How do you override BaseHTTPRequestHandler log_message() method to log to a file rather than to console (sys.stderr)?

Question

I'm creating a Webservice using BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer

I would like to log the following to be logged to a file rather than to the console. But I have not managed to find a way to do so yet.

10.23.23.19 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:06] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.23.23.19 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:06] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.24.20.14 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:27] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.24.20.14 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:31] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -

My Code looks like this:

from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer
from pysimplesoap.server import SoapDispatcher, SOAPHandler
.
# The rest of the code
.
.
httpd = HTTPServer(("", 8059),SOAPHandler)
    httpd.dispatcher = dispatcher
    httpd.serve_forever()

I'm using Python 2.6

Answer 1

If you read the doc or source code for BaseHTTPRequestHandler you'll find that all logging goes thru BaseHTTPRequestHandler.log_message() , which docstring explicitely specifies:

Log an arbitrary message.

This is used by all other logging functions. Override it if you have specific logging wishes.

So the solution is obviously to leave .send_response() alone (obviously you want your response to be sent), and replace .log_message() with either a call to a proper logger (cf http://docs.python.org/2/library/logging.html ) which is the clean and flexible way to to handle logging in Python or if you just want an quick hack a write to a filesystem file.

Answer 2

I managed to find a solution.

I created a logger with a FileHandler in the pysimplesoap/server.py file. I created the logger right after doing the necessary imports.

httpdkenlogger = logging.getLogger('httpd-ken')
#setup file handler
fh = logging.FileHandler('/opt/python/dev/interim/httpd-kenserver.3.log')
fh.setLevel(logging.INFO)
frmt = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
fh.setFormatter(frmt)
# Add this handler to the logger
httpdkenlogger.addHandler(fh)

Thereafter, within the definition of the SOAPHandler class, I decided to override the log_message function as follows:

class SOAPHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def log_message(self, format, *args):
        httpdkenlogger.info("%s - - [%s] %s\n" % (self.address_string(),self.log_date_time_string(),format%args))

Answer 3

I managed to suppress BaseHTTPRequestHandler info on console with:

class https_server(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def log_request(self, code): 
        pass
    ...

Source

Answer 4

In the manual it is stated:

BaseHTTPRequestHandler has the following instance variables:

log_message(format, ...)

The parameters to this are not listed, but by trial and error:

class MyClass(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def fn( self, *args ):
        print( args )

    def do_POST(self):
        self.log_message = self.fn

there are four parameters display (the first is the format, then the request info, status code, and one other field.

So using a something like:

    def myLog( self, fmt, request, code, other ):
        syslog( LOG_INFO, '%s %s' % ( code, request) )

    def do_POST(self):
        self.log_message = self.myLog

It's possible to log to your own endpoint.

The only down side I see is it's necessary to replace log_message on every handler instance.