A Python structured logger for Fluentd

Many web/mobile applications generate huge amount of event logs (c,f. login, logout, purchase, follow, etc). To analyze these event logs could be really valuable for improving the service. However, the challenge is collecting these logs easily and reliably.

Fluentd solves that problem by having: easy installation, small footprint, plugins, reliable buffering, log forwarding, etc.

fluent-logger-python is a Python library, to record the events from Python application.

Requirements

• Python 2.6 or greater including 3.x

Installation

This library is distributed as 'fluent-logger' python package. Please execute the following command to install it.

$ pip install fluent-logger

Configuration

Fluentd daemon must be launched with a tcp source configuration:

<source>
  type forward
  port 24224
</source>

To quickly test your setup, add a matcher that logs to the stdout:

<match app.**>
  type stdout
</match>

Usage

Event-Based Interface

First, you need to call logger.setup() to create global logger instance. This call needs to be called only once, at the beggining of the application for example.

By default, the logger assumes fluentd daemon is launched locally. You can also specify remote logger by passing the options.

from fluent import sender

# for local fluent
sender.setup('app')

# for remote fluent
sender.setup('app', host='host', port=24224)

Then, please create the events like this. This will send the event to fluent, with tag 'app.follow' and the attributes 'from' and 'to'.

from fluent import event

# send event to fluentd, with 'app.follow' tag
event.Event('follow', {
  'from': 'userA',
  'to':   'userB'
})

Python logging.Handler interface

This client-library also has FluentHandler class for Python logging module.

import logging
from fluent import handler

custom_format = {
  'host': '%(hostname)s',
  'where': '%(module)s.%(funcName)s',
  'type': '%(levelname)s',
  'stack_trace': '%(exc_text)s'
}

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
l = logging.getLogger('fluent.test')
h = handler.FluentHandler('app.follow', host='host', port=24224)
formatter = handler.FluentRecordFormatter(custom_format)
h.setFormatter(formatter)
l.addHandler(h)
l.info({
  'from': 'userA',
  'to': 'userB'
})
l.info('{"from": "userC", "to": "userD"}')
l.info("This log entry will be logged with the additional key: 'message'.")

You can also customize formatter via logging.config.dictConfig

import logging.config
import yaml

with open('logging.yaml') as fd:
    conf = yaml.load(fd)

logging.config.dictConfig(conf['logging'])

A sample configuration logging.yaml would be:

logging:
    version: 1

    formatters:
      brief:
        format: '%(message)s'
      default:
        format: '%(asctime)s %(levelname)-8s %(name)-15s %(message)s'
        datefmt: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
      fluent_fmt:
        '()': fluent.handler.FluentRecordFormatter
        format:
          level: '%(levelname)s'
          hostname: '%(hostname)s'
          where: '%(module)s.%(funcName)s'

    handlers:
        console:
            class : logging.StreamHandler
            level: DEBUG
            formatter: default
            stream: ext://sys.stdout
        fluent:
            class: fluent.handler.FluentHandler
            host: localhost
            port: 24224
            tag: test.logging
            formatter: fluent_fmt
            level: DEBUG
        null:
            class: logging.NullHandler

    loggers:
        amqp:
            handlers: [null]
            propagate: False
        conf:
            handlers: [null]
            propagate: False
        '': # root logger
            handlers: [console, fluent]
            level: DEBUG
            propagate: False

Testing

Testing can be done using nose.

Contributors

Patches contributed by those people.

License

Apache License, Version 2.0