Question

How do I add an encoding parameter to logging.basicConfig?

I have found this bug report that states that this is now possible for Python 3.3. I need this for Python 2.7 and the bug report says to use a custom logging.FileHandler object, but I can’t get it to work.

Answer 1

It will be easier to avoid using basicConfig() in your case – just create the handler and add it programmatically (ensuring that the code runs just once), e.g.:

root_logger= logging.getLogger()
root_logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG) # or whatever
handler = logging.FileHandler('test.log', 'w', 'utf-8') # or whatever
handler.setFormatter(logging.Formatter('%(name)s %(message)s')) # or whatever
root_logger.addHandler(handler)

That’s more or less what basicConfig() does.

Update: In Python 3.9 and later versions, basicConfig() has encoding and errors keyword parameters available.