Making logging friendly in webapps

Finding out whats going on in an application is always a key point when trying to figure out what's happening when things don't go the way you expect. In these kind of annoying situations, following the log of how your request mapped in and what was going on can save a significant amount of time. TurboGears has had great logging throughout it, and with 0.9.6, Pylons add's the same thorough logging.

But once the entire request is mapped out, it can be a real chore to track through them, toggle modules you want and don't want logging for, etc. Chainsaw has had excellent graphical support for navigating logging output, and with the help of Phil Jenvey's XMLLayout package its easy to output logging statements in a format for use with it.

With the recently updated Chainsaw section in the Pylons logging docs, you too can be lumberjacking with Chainsaw.

And of course, a shot of Chainsaw in action: