structlog 21.2.0

Easier Logging

You can stop writing prose and start thinking in terms of an event that happens in the context of key/value pairs:

>>> from structlog import get_logger
>>> log = get_logger()
>>> log.info("key_value_logging", out_of_the_box=True, effort=0)
2020-11-18 09:17.09 [info     ] key_value_logging              effort=0 out_of_the_box=True

Each log entry is a meaningful dictionary instead of an opaque string now!

Data Binding

Since log entries are dictionaries, you can start binding and re-binding key/value pairs to your loggers to ensure they are present in every following logging call:

>>> log = log.bind(user="anonymous", some_key=23)
>>> log = log.bind(user="hynek", another_key=42)
>>> log.info("user.logged_in", happy=True)
2020-11-18 09:18.28 [info     ] user.logged_in                 another_key=42 happy=True some_key=23 user=hynek

Powerful Pipelines

Each log entry goes through a processor pipeline that is just a chain of functions that receive a dictionary and return a new dictionary that gets fed into the next function. That allows for simple but powerful data manipulation:

def timestamper(logger, log_method, event_dict):
    """Add a timestamp to each log entry."""
    event_dict["timestamp"] = time.time()
    return event_dict

There are plenty of processors for most common tasks coming with structlog:

• Collectors of call stack information (“How did this log entry happen?”),

• …and exceptions (“What happened‽”).

• Unicode encoders/decoders.

• Flexible timestamping.

Formatting

structlog is completely flexible about how the resulting log entry is emitted. Since each log entry is a dictionary, it can be formatted to any format:

• A colorful key/value format for local development,

• JSON for easy parsing,

• or some standard format you have parsers for like nginx or Apache httpd.

Internally, formatters are processors whose return value (usually a string) is passed into loggers that are responsible for the output of your message. structlog comes with multiple useful formatters out-of-the-box.

Output

structlog is also very flexible with the final output of your log entries:

• A built-in lightweight printer like in the examples above. Easy to use and fast.

• Use the standard library’s or Twisted’s logging modules for compatibility. In this case structlog works like a wrapper that formats a string and passes them off into existing systems that won’t ever know that structlog even exists. Or the other way round: structlog comes with a logging formatter that allows for processing third party log records.

• Don’t format it to a string at all! structlog passes you a dictionary and you can do with it whatever you want. Reported uses cases are sending them out via network or saving them in a database.

Highly Testable

structlog is thouroughly tested and we see it as our duty to help you to achieve the same in your applications. That’s why it ships with a bunch of helpers to introspect your application’s logging behavior with little-to-no boilerplate.

Getting Help

Please use the structlog tag on StackOverflow to get help.

Answering questions of your fellow developers is also a great way to help the project!

Project Information

structlog is dual-licensed under Apache License, version 2 and MIT, available from PyPI, the source code can be found on GitHub, the documentation at https://www.structlog.org/.

We collect useful third party extension in our wiki.

structlog targets Python 3.6 and newer, and PyPy3.

Release Information

21.2.0 (2021-10-12)

Authors

structlog is written and maintained by Hynek Schlawack. It’s inspired by previous work done by Jean-Paul Calderone and David Reid.

The development is kindly supported by Variomedia AG.

A full list of contributors can be found on GitHub’s overview. Some of them disapprove of the addition of thread local context data. :)

The structlog logo has been contributed by Russell Keith-Magee.