Python has a standard library module logging which is a very useful development
tool. When a development environment does not have access to command line
interface such as writing an extension for Inkscape, a programmer cannot call print
function to output intermediate program variables. Instead, you use logging module
to monitor program flow.
The default logger is named root. You only need three lines of code to output some information to a log file. Predefined logging levels are debug, info, warning, error, and critical. By default, root logger only outputs messages with a severity level of warning and above.
import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG, filename='logging.txt')
logging.debug('This is a debug message')
Logging module defines many classes. Commonly used classes are Logger,
LogRecord, Handler, and Formatter. Logger class is not instantiated directly.
The first time call to module level function logging.getLogger(name) returns
a Logger object. Subsequent calls to the function return a reference to the same
Logger object. A typical example looks like this,
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
f_handler = logging.FileHandler('file.log') # StreamHandler
f_handler.setLevel(logging.ERROR)
f_format = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
f_handler.setFormatter(f_format)
logger.addHandler(f_handler)
logger.error('This is an error')
If you need a more versatile logging system, you create a config file or a
dictionary and then load it using fileConfig or dictConfig methods.
An article Logging in Python in realpython.com site is a very nice introduction to the topic.
Here is a link to the official Python logging module document.