How to get Python exception text

user_157267 0
Viewed 21715

I want to embed python in my C++ application. I'm using Boost library - great tool. But i have one problem.

If python function throws an exception, i want to catch it and print error in my application or get some detailed information like line number in python script that caused error.

How can i do it? I can't find any functions to get detailed exception information in Python API or Boost.

try {
module=import("MyModule"); //this line will throw excetion if MyModule contains an   error
} catch ( error_already_set const & ) {
//Here i can said that i have error, but i cant determine what caused an error
std::cout << "error!" << std::endl;
}

PyErr_Print() just prints error text to stderr and clears error so it can't be solution

boost-python exception python c++
5 Answers

This thread has been very useful for me, but I had problems with the Python C API when I tried to extract the error message itself with no traceback. I found plenty of ways to do that in Python, but I couldn't find any way to do this in C++. I finally came up with the following version, which uses the C API as little as possible and instead relies much more on boost python.

PyErr_Print();

using namespace boost::python;

exec("import traceback, sys", mainNamespace_);
auto pyErr = eval("str(sys.last_value)", mainNamespace_);
auto pyStackTrace = eval("'\\n'.join(traceback.format_exception(sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback))", mainNamespace_);

stackTraceString_ = extract<std::string>(pyStackTrace);
errorSummary_ = extract<std::string>(pyErr);

The reason this works is because PyErr_Print() also sets the value for sys.last_value, sys.last_type, and sys.last_traceback. Those are set to the same values as sys.exc_info would give, so this is functionally similar to the following python code:

import traceback
import sys

try:
    raise RuntimeError("This is a test")
except:
    err_type = sys.exc_info()[0]
    value = sys.exc_info()[1]
    tb = sys.exc_info()[2]

    stack_trace = "\n".join(traceback.format_exception(err_type, value, tb))
    error_summary = str(value)


print(stack_trace)
print(error_summary)

I hope someone finds this useful!

user_35249820

Here's some code based on some of the other answers and comments, nicely formatted with modern C++ and comments. Minimally tested but it seems to work.

#include <string>
#include <boost/python.hpp>
#include <Python.h>

// Return the current Python error and backtrace as a string, or throw
// an exception if there was none.
std::string python_error_string() {
  using namespace boost::python;

  PyObject* ptype = nullptr;
  PyObject* pvalue = nullptr;
  PyObject* ptraceback = nullptr;

  // Fetch the exception information. If there was no error ptype will be set
  // to null. The other two values might set to null anyway.
  PyErr_Fetch(&ptype, &pvalue, &ptraceback);
  if (ptype == nullptr) {
    throw std::runtime_error("A Python error was detected but when we called "
                             "PyErr_Fetch() it returned null indicating that "
                             "there was no error.");
  }

  // Sometimes pvalue is not an instance of ptype. This converts it. It's
  // done lazily for performance reasons.
  PyErr_NormalizeException(&ptype, &pvalue, &ptraceback);
  if (ptraceback != nullptr) {
    PyException_SetTraceback(pvalue, ptraceback);
  }

  // Get Boost handles to the Python objects so we get an easier API.
  handle<> htype(ptype);
  handle<> hvalue(allow_null(pvalue));
  handle<> htraceback(allow_null(ptraceback));

  // Import the `traceback` module and use it to format the exception.
  object traceback = import("traceback");
  object format_exception = traceback.attr("format_exception");
  object formatted_list = format_exception(htype, hvalue, htraceback);
  object formatted = str("\n").join(formatted_list);
  return extract<std::string>(formatted);
}

Btw I was curious why everyone is using handle<> instead of handle. Apparently it disables template argument deduction. Not sure why you'd want that here but it isn't the same anyway, and the Boost docs say to use handle<> too so I guess there is a good reason.

user_2655210
Related