Simple Log to File example for django 1.3+
Question: The release notes say:

> Django 1.3 adds framework-level support for Python’s logging module.

That's nice. I'd like to take advantage of that. Unfortunately [the
documentation](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/logging/) doesn't
hand it all to me on a silver platter in the form of complete working example
code which demonstrates how simple and valuable this is.

How do I set up this funky new feature such that I can pepper my code with

    
    
    logging.debug('awesome stuff dude: %s' % somevar)
    

and see the file "/tmp/application.log" fill up with

    
    
    18:31:59 Apr 21 2011 awesome stuff dude: foobar
    18:32:00 Apr 21 2011 awesome stuff dude: foobar
    18:32:01 Apr 21 2011 awesome stuff dude: foobar
    

What's the difference between the default Python logging and this 'framework-
level support'?


Answer: I truly love this so much here is your working example! Seriously this is
awesome!

Start by putting this in your `settings.py`

    
    
    LOGGING = {
        'version': 1,
        'disable_existing_loggers': True,
        'formatters': {
            'standard': {
                'format' : "[%(asctime)s] %(levelname)s [%(name)s:%(lineno)s] %(message)s",
                'datefmt' : "%d/%b/%Y %H:%M:%S"
            },
        },
        'handlers': {
            'null': {
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'class':'django.utils.log.NullHandler',
            },
            'logfile': {
                'level':'DEBUG',
                'class':'logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler',
                'filename': SITE_ROOT + "/logfile",
                'maxBytes': 50000,
                'backupCount': 2,
                'formatter': 'standard',
            },
            'console':{
                'level':'INFO',
                'class':'logging.StreamHandler',
                'formatter': 'standard'
            },
        },
        'loggers': {
            'django': {
                'handlers':['console'],
                'propagate': True,
                'level':'WARN',
            },
            'django.db.backends': {
                'handlers': ['console'],
                'level': 'DEBUG',
                'propagate': False,
            },
            'MYAPP': {
                'handlers': ['console', 'logfile'],
                'level': 'DEBUG',
            },
        }
    }
    

Now what does all of this mean?

  1. Formaters I like it to come out as the same style as ./manage.py runserver
  2. Handlers - I want two logs - a debug text file, and an info console. This allows me to really dig in (if needed) and look at a text file to see what happens under the hood.
  3. Loggers - Here is where we nail down what we want to log. In general django gets WARN and above - the exception (hence propagate) is the backends where I love to see the SQL calls since they can get crazy.. Last is my app were I have two handlers and push everything to it.

Now how do I enable MYAPP to use it...

Per the
[documentation](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/logging/#using-
logging) put this at the top of your files (views.py)..

    
    
    import logging
    log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
    

Then to get something out do this.

    
    
    log.debug("Hey there it works!!")
    log.info("Hey there it works!!")
    log.warn("Hey there it works!!")
    log.error("Hey there it works!!")
    

Log levels are explained
[here](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/logging/#making-logging-
calls) and for pure python
[here](http://docs.python.org/library/logging.html).

