Question

I have a single logger with multiple handlers, which have their own formatters. Now I want to add an indenting feature, with the indent level controlled at runtime. I want messages from all the handlers to get this indent. I’ve tried to create it as a filter, but found that I seem to be unable to alter the message content. Then I’ve tried it as a formatter, but I can only have one per handler. How can I add such indentation without explicitly changing the formatters of every handler?
I should mention that one of the formatters I have is a class that adds color to the output. It is not a simple format string.

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In addition, I am using a config file. Ideally, I’d like to be able to drive this mostly from there. However, I need to modify the state of the indent formatter (e.g. set indent level), but I don’t know how to get to that particular formatter as there’s no logger.getFormatter("by_name") method.
To clarify, I need to access the specific formatter instance, essentially to adjust the format on the fly. The instance has been created by logging.config from the file. I don’t find any accessor methods that would allow me to get the particular formatter given its name.

Answer 1

Here’s another, hacky, but simple one. My messages for all handlers always start with a message level string. Just modify those darn strings on every indent change:

# (make a LEVELS dict out of all the logging levels first)    
def indent(self, step = 1):
        "Change the current indent level by the step (use negative to decrease)"
        self._indent_level += step
        if self._indent_level < 0:
            self._indent_level = 0
        self._indent_str = self._indent_str_base * self._indent_level
        for lvl in LEVELS:
            level_name = self._indent_str + LEVELS[lvl]
            logging.addLevelName(lvl, level_name)

(see my other answer for the stuff that surrounds indent function)
Now the indenter can be an independent class without messing with the details of logging process. As long as the message includes the level string, the indent will be there, even if some stuff is coming before it. Not ideal in general, but may work for me.
Anybody has more ideas that work for any msg format?