How should I verify a log message when testing Python code under nose?

Question

I\'m trying to write a simple unit test that will verify that, under a certain condition, a class in my application will log an error via the standard logging API. I can\'t

Answer 1

UPDATE: No longer any need for the answer below. Use the built-in Python way instead!

This answer extends the work done in https://stackoverflow.com/a/1049375/1286628. The handler is largely the same (the constructor is more idiomatic, using super). Further, I add a demonstration of how to use the handler with the standard library's unittest.

class MockLoggingHandler(logging.Handler):
    """Mock logging handler to check for expected logs.

    Messages are available from an instance's ``messages`` dict, in order, indexed by
    a lowercase log level string (e.g., 'debug', 'info', etc.).
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.messages = {'debug': [], 'info': [], 'warning': [], 'error': [],
                         'critical': []}
        super(MockLoggingHandler, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def emit(self, record):
        "Store a message from ``record`` in the instance's ``messages`` dict."
        try:
            self.messages[record.levelname.lower()].append(record.getMessage())
        except Exception:
            self.handleError(record)

    def reset(self):
        self.acquire()
        try:
            for message_list in self.messages.values():
                message_list.clear()
        finally:
            self.release()

Then you can use the handler in a standard-library unittest.TestCase like so:

import unittest
import logging
import foo

class TestFoo(unittest.TestCase):

    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        super(TestFoo, cls).setUpClass()
        # Assuming you follow Python's logging module's documentation's
        # recommendation about naming your module's logs after the module's
        # __name__,the following getLogger call should fetch the same logger
        # you use in the foo module
        foo_log = logging.getLogger(foo.__name__)
        cls._foo_log_handler = MockLoggingHandler(level='DEBUG')
        foo_log.addHandler(cls._foo_log_handler)
        cls.foo_log_messages = cls._foo_log_handler.messages

    def setUp(self):
        super(TestFoo, self).setUp()
        self._foo_log_handler.reset() # So each test is independent

    def test_foo_objects_fromble_nicely(self):
        # Do a bunch of frombling with foo objects
        # Now check that they've logged 5 frombling messages at the INFO level
        self.assertEqual(len(self.foo_log_messages['info']), 5)
        for info_message in self.foo_log_messages['info']:
            self.assertIn('fromble', info_message)