Retrieving the output of subprocess.call()

user_166792 0
Viewed 558487

How can I get the output of a process run using subprocess.call()?

Passing a StringIO.StringIO object to stdout gives this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 444, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 588, in __init__
    errread, errwrite) = self._get_handles(stdin, stdout, stderr)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 945, in _get_handles
    c2pwrite = stdout.fileno()
AttributeError: StringIO instance has no attribute 'fileno'
>>>
stringio subprocess pipe python
7 Answers

Output from subprocess.call() should only be redirected to files.

You should use subprocess.Popen() instead. Then you can pass subprocess.PIPE for the stderr, stdout, and/or stdin parameters and read from the pipes by using the communicate() method:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

p = Popen(['program', 'arg1'], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
output, err = p.communicate(b"input data that is passed to subprocess' stdin")
rc = p.returncode

The reasoning is that the file-like object used by subprocess.call() must have a real file descriptor, and thus implement the fileno() method. Just using any file-like object won't do the trick.

See here for more info.

user_2420430

The key is to use the function subprocess.check_output

For example, the following function captures stdout and stderr of the process and returns that as well as whether or not the call succeeded. It is Python 2 and 3 compatible:

from subprocess import check_output, CalledProcessError, STDOUT

def system_call(command):
    """ 
    params:
        command: list of strings, ex. `["ls", "-l"]`
    returns: output, success
    """
    try:
        output = check_output(command, stderr=STDOUT).decode()
        success = True 
    except CalledProcessError as e:
        output = e.output.decode()
        success = False
    return output, success

output, success = system_call(["ls", "-l"])

If you want to pass commands as strings rather than arrays, use this version:

from subprocess import check_output, CalledProcessError, STDOUT
import shlex

def system_call(command):
    """ 
    params:
        command: string, ex. `"ls -l"`
    returns: output, success
    """
    command = shlex.split(command)
    try:
        output = check_output(command, stderr=STDOUT).decode()
        success = True 
    except CalledProcessError as e:
        output = e.output.decode()
        success = False
    return output, success

output, success = system_call("ls -l")
user_28008760
Related