In Django, how can I tell my project to read/write in distinct log directories at runtime? - django

Question

I am working on a django project that, along with having a database for its models and relations, writes to a log directory called activity_logs outside of the project directory to keep track of formatted user activities, one file for each user. This is an alternative file-structure-based solution to having a database table carry this information along, because this offloads some storage from the DB and is relatively easy to format and express such activities. Perhaps some of you may recommend storing this kind of data in the database, which is fine, but I still believe there is question from all of this that I need help answering.
This django project has multiple apps that have an extensive test suite, one for each app. Additionally, there is a logging.py file that encapsulates the logging functionality (writing/reading activities to/from log files), and so both the test cases within the test suites as well as the view functions (and various other utility functions) all utilize these logging functions in order to store these user activities and retrieve them based on model relationships to emulate a user notification system. Since the logging module takes care of this logging, it needs to know where to write to, and so we have a directory structure called activity_logs to which it writes user log files, creating one for a new user and deleting one for a user removed from the database. One of the newest changes we would like to make in this project is to create a separate logging directory for testing this logging functionality, something like test_activity_logs, so that it would never be confused when writing to the test directory for test users or the regular activity log directory for real users.
My problem is this: at runtime, how can I tell the system, at whichever startpoint of execution (whether it be from a view function call through the django test Client object, a test case, an actual HTTPrequest made via a URL, etc.), when to look inside the activity_logs or the test_activity_logs directory? It solely depends on whether I am generating new information for a real user or a test user, but a User is a User in our system, and I'm facing some trouble trying to tell these functions that call some logging functions to write to the test log directory vs. the regular one. For example, one approach I am trying is to pass a keyword argument (kwarg) to the logging functions so that they can be made aware of which directory to read/write to/from, like so:
self.assertTrue(activity_has_been_logged(ACTIVITY_ACCOUNT_CREATED, user.get_profile(), use_test_activity_log_directory=True) == True)
the kwarg called use_test_activity_log_directory=True will tell the logging function called activity_has_been_logged to read the test activity log directory. Unfortunately, apart from being a little inflexible (but tolerable), this doesn't solve the situation where the django test client object sends a GET or POST request via a URL to a view function that writes activities to log files:
response = client.post(propose_match_url, post) #Can't write to test_log_directory if by default it writes to regular directory!
How do I let the client pass on this kwarg to those view functions? I think that it should totally be possible to do this, but I'm not sure if fiddling with these kwargs is the best way, or maybe create a global variable in the project settings file, but maybe that might cause some trouble with race conditions with a shared mutable variable.
Your help would be great. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

So I just solved this problem. The logging file hosting all logging functionality is really the only place that needs to know where to look (either test_activity_logs or activity_logs), since all other components will invoke functions from the logging module to write/read to/from these directories. I gave an additional field to the model class of the UserProfile class called is_test that is a boolean field to determine whether to look in the test_activity_logs if is_test=True, or activity_logs if is_test=False. That way, the logging module needs only to check the input parameter of type UserProfile and its new field to determine where to perform its logging functionalities. Problem solved!

Answer 2

Check out daemontools if you're on a *nix box or launchd on OS X. Both can make sure your Django instance stays running in whatever mode you prefer (daemontools has a few more options for that) and can isolate a directory for logging stdout/stderr.
You can set environment variables for each instance to help other log files and temporary files know where to be created, which you then get from os.environment or simply use the current working directory as a base if using daemontools.
The directory is automatically created for you using daemontools.