I'm trying to understand how exactly python logging is thread safe in the folowing cases: 1. I create different handlers for the same file in the main thread. and then ask a thread to log to it. 2. I create multiple handlers pointing to the same file, from within different threads.
I see in the source code of FileHandler that every Handler created has its own lock, but how does this work in the cases I have mentioned? if I understand it correctly, the lock's scopes is the FileHandler object, meaning that if I create 2 different handlers they don't share the lock, and they might run into a race condition.
So my question is: how is this threadsafe?
here is the relevant code. please note that the FileHandler Class inherits StreamHandler which in turn inherits Handler.
class StreamHandler(Handler):
"""
A handler class which writes logging records, appropriately formatted,
to a stream. Note that this class does not close the stream, as
sys.stdout or sys.stderr may be used.
"""
terminator = '\n'
def __init__(self, stream=None):
"""
Initialize the handler.
If stream is not specified, sys.stderr is used.
"""
Handler.__init__(self)
if stream is None:
stream = sys.stderr
self.stream = stream
def flush(self):
"""
Flushes the stream.
"""
self.acquire()
try:
if self.stream and hasattr(self.stream, "flush"):
self.stream.flush()
finally:
self.release()
def emit(self, record):
"""
Emit a record.
If a formatter is specified, it is used to format the record.
The record is then written to the stream with a trailing newline. If
exception information is present, it is formatted using
traceback.print_exception and appended to the stream. If the stream
has an 'encoding' attribute, it is used to determine how to do the
output to the stream.
"""
try:
msg = self.format(record)
stream = self.stream
stream.write(msg)
stream.write(self.terminator)
self.flush()
except Exception:
self.handleError(record)
def __repr__(self):
level = getLevelName(self.level)
name = getattr(self.stream, 'name', '')
if name:
name += ' '
return '<%s %s(%s)>' % (self.__class__.__name__, name, level)
class FileHandler(StreamHandler):
"""
A handler class which writes formatted logging records to disk files.
"""
def __init__(self, filename, mode='a', encoding=None, delay=False):
"""
Open the specified file and use it as the stream for logging.
"""
# Issue #27493: add support for Path objects to be passed in
filename = os.fspath(filename)
#keep the absolute path, otherwise derived classes which use this
#may come a cropper when the current directory changes
self.baseFilename = os.path.abspath(filename)
self.mode = mode
self.encoding = encoding
self.delay = delay
if delay:
#We don't open the stream, but we still need to call the
#Handler constructor to set level, formatter, lock etc.
Handler.__init__(self)
self.stream = None
else:
StreamHandler.__init__(self, self._open())
def close(self):
"""
Closes the stream.
"""
self.acquire()
try:
try:
if self.stream:
try:
self.flush()
finally:
stream = self.stream
self.stream = None
if hasattr(stream, "close"):
stream.close()
finally:
# Issue #19523: call unconditionally to
# prevent a handler leak when delay is set
StreamHandler.close(self)
finally:
self.release()
def _open(self):
"""
Open the current base file with the (original) mode and encoding.
Return the resulting stream.
"""
return open(self.baseFilename, self.mode, encoding=self.encoding)
def emit(self, record):
"""
Emit a record.
If the stream was not opened because 'delay' was specified in the
constructor, open it before calling the superclass's emit.
"""
if self.stream is None:
self.stream = self._open()
StreamHandler.emit(self, record)
def __repr__(self):
level = getLevelName(self.level)
return '<%s %s (%s)>' % (self.__class__.__name__, self.baseFilename, level)