Does pdb offer watchpoints? [duplicate] - python-2.7

Question

There is large python project where one attribute of one class just have wrong value in some place.
It should be sqlalchemy.orm.attributes.InstrumentedAttribute, but when I run tests it is constant value, let's say string.
There is some way to run python program in debug mode, and run some check (if variable changed type) after each step throught line of code automatically?
P.S. I know how to log changes of attribute of class instance with help of inspect and property decorator. Possibly here I can use this method with metaclasses...
But sometimes I need more general and powerfull solution...
Thank you.
P.P.S. I need something like there: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7669165/816449, but may be with more explanation of what is going on in that code.

Answer 1

Well, here is a sort of slow approach. It can be modified for watching for local variable change (just by name). Here is how it works: we do sys.settrace and analyse the value of obj.attr each step. The tricky part is that we receive 'line' events (that some line was executed) before line is executed. So, when we notice that obj.attr has changed, we are already on the next line and we can't get the previous line frame (because frames aren't copied for each line, they are modified ). So on each line event I save traceback.format_stack to watcher.prev_st and if on the next call of trace_command value has changed, we print the saved stack trace to file. Saving traceback on each line is quite an expensive operation, so you'd have to set include keyword to a list of your projects directories (or just the root of your project) in order not to watch how other libraries are doing their stuff and waste cpu.
watcher.py
import traceback
class Watcher(object):
def __init__(self, obj=None, attr=None, log_file='log.txt', include=[], enabled=False):
"""
Debugger that watches for changes in object attributes
obj - object to be watched
attr - string, name of attribute
log_file - string, where to write output
include - list of strings, debug files only in these directories.
Set it to path of your project otherwise it will take long time
to run on big libraries import and usage.
"""
self.log_file=log_file
with open(self.log_file, 'wb'): pass
self.prev_st = None
self.include = [incl.replace('\\','/') for incl in include]
if obj:
self.value = getattr(obj, attr)
self.obj = obj
self.attr = attr
self.enabled = enabled # Important, must be last line on __init__.
def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs['enabled'] = True
self.__init__(*args, **kwargs)
def check_condition(self):
tmp = getattr(self.obj, self.attr)
result = tmp != self.value
self.value = tmp
return result
def trace_command(self, frame, event, arg):
if event!='line' or not self.enabled:
return self.trace_command
if self.check_condition():
if self.prev_st:
with open(self.log_file, 'ab') as f:
print >>f, "Value of",self.obj,".",self.attr,"changed!"
print >>f,"###### Line:"
print >>f,''.join(self.prev_st)
if self.include:
fname = frame.f_code.co_filename.replace('\\','/')
to_include = False
for incl in self.include:
if fname.startswith(incl):
to_include = True
break
if not to_include:
return self.trace_command
self.prev_st = traceback.format_stack(frame)
return self.trace_command
import sys
watcher = Watcher()
sys.settrace(watcher.trace_command)
testwatcher.py
from watcher import watcher
import numpy as np
import urllib2
class X(object):
def __init__(self, foo):
self.foo = foo
class Y(object):
def __init__(self, x):
self.xoo = x
def boom(self):
self.xoo.foo = "xoo foo!"
def main():
x = X(50)
watcher(x, 'foo', log_file='log.txt', include =['C:/Users/j/PycharmProjects/hello'])
x.foo = 500
x.goo = 300
y = Y(x)
y.boom()
arr = np.arange(0,100,0.1)
arr = arr**2
for i in xrange(3):
print 'a'
x.foo = i
for i in xrange(1):
i = i+1
main()

Answer 2

There's a very simple way to do this: use watchpoints.
Basically you only need to do
from watchpoints import watch
watch(your_object.attr)
That's it. Whenever the attribute is changed, it will print out the line that changed it and how it's changed. Super easy to use.
It also has more advanced features, for example, you can call pdb when the variable is changed, or use your own callback functions instead of print it to stdout.

Answer 3

A simpler way to watch for an object's attribute change (which can also be a module-level variable or anything accessible with getattr) would be to leverage hunter library, a flexible code tracing toolkit. To detect state changes we need a predicate which can look like the following:
import traceback
class MutationWatcher:
def __init__(self, target, attrs):
self.target = target
self.state = {k: getattr(target, k) for k in attrs}
def __call__(self, event):
result = False
for k, v in self.state.items():
current_value = getattr(self.target, k)
if v != current_value:
result = True
self.state[k] = current_value
print('Value of attribute {} has chaned from {!r} to {!r}'.format(
k, v, current_value))
if result:
traceback.print_stack(event.frame)
return result
Then given a sample code:
class TargetThatChangesWeirdly:
attr_name = 1
def some_nested_function_that_does_the_nasty_mutation(obj):
obj.attr_name = 2
def some_public_api(obj):
some_nested_function_that_does_the_nasty_mutation(obj)
We can instrument it with hunter like:
# or any other entry point that calls the public API of interest
if __name__ == '__main__':
obj = TargetThatChangesWeirdly()
import hunter
watcher = MutationWatcher(obj, ['attr_name'])
hunter.trace(watcher, stdlib=False, action=hunter.CodePrinter)
some_public_api(obj)
Running the module produces:
Value of attribute attr_name has chaned from 1 to 2
File "test.py", line 44, in <module>
some_public_api(obj)
File "test.py", line 10, in some_public_api
some_nested_function_that_does_the_nasty_mutation(obj)
File "test.py", line 6, in some_nested_function_that_does_the_nasty_mutation
obj.attr_name = 2
test.py:6 return obj.attr_name = 2
... return value: None
You can also use other actions that hunter supports. For instance, Debugger which breaks into pdb (debugger on an attribute change).

Answer 4

Try using __setattr__ to override the function that is called when an attribute assignment is attempted. Documentation for __setattr__

Answer 5

You can use the python debugger module (part of the standard library)
To use, just import pdb at the top of your source file:
import pdb
and then set a trace wherever you want to start inspecting the code:
pdb.set_trace()
You can then step through the code with n, and investigate the current state by running python commands.

Answer 6

def __setattr__(self, name, value):
if name=="xxx":
util.output_stack('xxxxx')
super(XXX, self).__setattr__(name, value)
This sample code helped me.