suppress output on library import in python

Question

I have a library that I need to import on my code. However, whenever it is imported it outputs several lines of data to the console. How can I suppress the output?

Thanks

Answer 1

import os
import sys

# silence command-line output temporarily
sys.stdout, sys.stderr = os.devnull, os.devnull

# import the desired library
import library

# unsilence command-line output
sys.stdout, sys.stderr = sys.__stdout__, sys.__stderr__

Answer 2

You can try to redirect sys.stdout into a StringIO to capture any text output. So basically everything which would be printed out, will be saved in text_trap.

import io
import sys

#setup text trap
text_trap = io.StringIO()
sys.stdout = text_trap

#to reset the text trap
sys.stdout = sys.__stdout__

A working example:

from io import BytesIO as StringIO
import sys

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print "hello1"

    #setup text trap
    text_trap = StringIO()
    sys.stdout = text_trap

    print("hello2")

    #reset
    sys.stdout = sys.__stdout__
    print "hello3"

Output:

hello1
hello3