I’m using Python’s logging module to log some debug strings to a file which works pretty well. Now in addition, I’d like to use this module to also print the strings out to stdout. How do I do this? In order to log my strings to a file I use following code:

import logging
import logging.handlers
logger = logging.getLogger("")
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
handler = logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(
    LOGFILE, maxBytes=(1048576*5), backupCount=7
)
formatter = logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s")
handler.setFormatter(formatter)
logger.addHandler(handler)

and then call a logger function like

logger.debug("I am written to the file")

Thank you for some help here!

Just get a handle to the root logger and add the StreamHandler. The StreamHandler writes to stderr. Not sure if you really need stdout over stderr, but this is what I use when I setup the Python logger and I also add the FileHandler as well. Then all my logs go to both places (which is what it sounds like you want).

import logging
logging.getLogger().addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

If you want to output to stdout instead of stderr, you just need to specify it to the StreamHandler constructor.

import sys
# ...
logging.getLogger().addHandler(logging.StreamHandler(sys.stdout))

You could also add a Formatter to it so all your log lines have a common header.

ie:

import logging
logFormatter = logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s [%(threadName)-12.12s] [%(levelname)-5.5s]  %(message)s")
rootLogger = logging.getLogger()

fileHandler = logging.FileHandler("{0}/{1}.log".format(logPath, fileName))
fileHandler.setFormatter(logFormatter)
rootLogger.addHandler(fileHandler)

consoleHandler = logging.StreamHandler()
consoleHandler.setFormatter(logFormatter)
rootLogger.addHandler(consoleHandler)

Prints to the format of:

2012-12-05 16:58:26,618 [MainThread  ] [INFO ]  my message

logging.basicConfig() can take a keyword argument handlers since Python 3.3, which simplifies logging setup a lot, especially when setting up multiple handlers with the same formatter:

handlers – If specified, this should be an iterable of already created handlers to add to the root logger. Any handlers which don’t already have a formatter set will be assigned the default formatter created in this function.

The whole setup can therefore be done with a single call like this:

import logging

logging.basicConfig(
    level=logging.INFO,
    format="%(asctime)s [%(levelname)s] %(message)s",
    handlers=[
        logging.FileHandler("debug.log"),
        logging.StreamHandler()
    ]
)

(Or with import sys + StreamHandler(sys.stdout) per original question’s requirements – the default for StreamHandler is to write to stderr. Look at LogRecord attributes if you want to customize the log format and add things like filename/line, thread info etc.)

The setup above needs to be done only once near the beginning of the script. You can use the logging from all other places in the codebase later like this:

logging.info('Useful message')
logging.error('Something bad happened')
...

Note: If it doesn’t work, someone else has probably already initialized the logging system differently. Comments suggest doing logging.root.handlers = [] before the call to basicConfig().

Adding a StreamHandler without arguments goes to stderr instead of stdout. If some other process has a dependency on the stdout dump (i.e. when writing an NRPE plugin), then make sure to specify stdout explicitly or you might run into some unexpected troubles.

Here’s a quick example reusing the assumed values and LOGFILE from the question:

import logging
from logging.handlers import RotatingFileHandler
from logging import handlers
import sys

log = logging.getLogger('')
log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
format = logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s")

ch = logging.StreamHandler(sys.stdout)
ch.setFormatter(format)
log.addHandler(ch)

fh = handlers.RotatingFileHandler(LOGFILE, maxBytes=(1048576*5), backupCount=7)
fh.setFormatter(format)
log.addHandler(fh)

Either run basicConfig with stream=sys.stdout as the argument prior to setting up any other handlers or logging any messages, or manually add a StreamHandler that pushes messages to stdout to the root logger (or any other logger you want, for that matter).

After having used Waterboy’s code over and over in multiple Python packages, I finally cast it into a tiny standalone Python package, which you can find here:

https://github.com/acschaefer/duallog

The code is well documented and easy to use. Simply download the .py file and include it in your project, or install the whole package via pip install duallog.

Logging to stdout and rotating file with different levels and formats:

import logging
import logging.handlers
import sys

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # Change root logger level from WARNING (default) to NOTSET in order for all messages to be delegated.
    logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.NOTSET)

    # Add stdout handler, with level INFO
    console = logging.StreamHandler(sys.stdout)
    console.setLevel(logging.INFO)
    formater = logging.Formatter('%(name)-13s: %(levelname)-8s %(message)s')
    console.setFormatter(formater)
    logging.getLogger().addHandler(console)

    # Add file rotating handler, with level DEBUG
    rotatingHandler = logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(filename='rotating.log', maxBytes=1000, backupCount=5)
    rotatingHandler.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    formatter = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
    rotatingHandler.setFormatter(formatter)
    logging.getLogger().addHandler(rotatingHandler)

    log = logging.getLogger("app." + __name__)

    log.debug('Debug message, should only appear in the file.')
    log.info('Info message, should appear in file and stdout.')
    log.warning('Warning message, should appear in file and stdout.')
    log.error('Error message, should appear in file and stdout.')

Here is a complete, nicely wrapped solution based on Waterboy’s answer and various other sources. It supports logging to both console and log file, allows for different log level settings, provides colorized output and is easily configurable (also available as Gist):

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#                                                                               -
#  Python dual-logging setup (console and log file),                            -
#  supporting different log levels and colorized output                         -
#                                                                               -
#  Created by Fonic <https://github.com/fonic>                                  -
#  Date: 04/05/20                                                               -
#                                                                               -
#  Based on:                                                                    -
#  https://stackoverflow.com/a/13733863/1976617                                 -
#  https://uran198.github.io/en/python/2016/07/12/colorful-python-logging.html  -
#  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors                        -
#                                                                               -
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Imports
import os
import sys
import logging

# Logging formatter supporting colored output
class LogFormatter(logging.Formatter):

    COLOR_CODES = {
        logging.CRITICAL: "\033[1;35m", # bright/bold magenta
        logging.ERROR:    "\033[1;31m", # bright/bold red
        logging.WARNING:  "\033[1;33m", # bright/bold yellow
        logging.INFO:     "\033[0;37m", # white / light gray
        logging.DEBUG:    "\033[1;30m"  # bright/bold black / dark gray
    }

    RESET_CODE = "\033[0m"

    def __init__(self, color, *args, **kwargs):
        super(LogFormatter, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.color = color

    def format(self, record, *args, **kwargs):
        if (self.color == True and record.levelno in self.COLOR_CODES):
            record.color_on  = self.COLOR_CODES[record.levelno]
            record.color_off = self.RESET_CODE
        else:
            record.color_on  = ""
            record.color_off = ""
        return super(LogFormatter, self).format(record, *args, **kwargs)

# Setup logging
def setup_logging(console_log_output, console_log_level, console_log_color, logfile_file, logfile_log_level, logfile_log_color, log_line_template):

    # Create logger
    # For simplicity, we use the root logger, i.e. call 'logging.getLogger()'
    # without name argument. This way we can simply use module methods for
    # for logging throughout the script. An alternative would be exporting
    # the logger, i.e. 'global logger; logger = logging.getLogger("<name>")'
    logger = logging.getLogger()

    # Set global log level to 'debug' (required for handler levels to work)
    logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

    # Create console handler
    console_log_output = console_log_output.lower()
    if (console_log_output == "stdout"):
        console_log_output = sys.stdout
    elif (console_log_output == "stderr"):
        console_log_output = sys.stderr
    else:
        print("Failed to set console output: invalid output: '%s'" % console_log_output)
        return False
    console_handler = logging.StreamHandler(console_log_output)

    # Set console log level
    try:
        console_handler.setLevel(console_log_level.upper()) # only accepts uppercase level names
    except:
        print("Failed to set console log level: invalid level: '%s'" % console_log_level)
        return False

    # Create and set formatter, add console handler to logger
    console_formatter = LogFormatter(fmt=log_line_template, color=console_log_color)
    console_handler.setFormatter(console_formatter)
    logger.addHandler(console_handler)

    # Create log file handler
    try:
        logfile_handler = logging.FileHandler(logfile_file)
    except Exception as exception:
        print("Failed to set up log file: %s" % str(exception))
        return False

    # Set log file log level
    try:
        logfile_handler.setLevel(logfile_log_level.upper()) # only accepts uppercase level names
    except:
        print("Failed to set log file log level: invalid level: '%s'" % logfile_log_level)
        return False

    # Create and set formatter, add log file handler to logger
    logfile_formatter = LogFormatter(fmt=log_line_template, color=logfile_log_color)
    logfile_handler.setFormatter(logfile_formatter)
    logger.addHandler(logfile_handler)

    # Success
    return True

# Main function
def main():

    # Setup logging
    script_name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))[0]
    if (not setup_logging(console_log_output="stdout", console_log_level="warning", console_log_color=True,
                        logfile_file=script_name + ".log", logfile_log_level="debug", logfile_log_color=False,
                        log_line_template="%(color_on)s[%(created)d] [%(threadName)s] [%(levelname)-8s] %(message)s%(color_off)s")):
        print("Failed to setup logging, aborting.")
        return 1

    # Log some messages
    logging.debug("Debug message")
    logging.info("Info message")
    logging.warning("Warning message")
    logging.error("Error message")
    logging.critical("Critical message")

# Call main function
if (__name__ == "__main__"):
    sys.exit(main())

For 2.7, try the following:

fh = logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler(LOGFILE, maxBytes=(1048576*5), backupCount=7)