Are you tired of dealing with ***** bugs that just won’t go away?
cgitb is a special exception handler for Python scripts that displays detailed and formatted reports when an uncaught exception occurs. It was originally designed for CGI scripts but can be used with any script. Let me show you how to enable it!
First, add this line at the top of your Python file:
# Import the cgitb module
import cgitb
# Enable the cgitb exception handler
cgitb.enable()
# The above two lines of code allow for detailed and formatted reports to be displayed when an uncaught exception occurs in the script. This is useful for debugging and troubleshooting purposes.
This will activate cgitb and display a report in the browser when an exception occurs. If you don’t want to send the report to the browser, set the `display` argument to 0 like this:
# Import the cgitb module
import cgitb
# Enable cgitb to display a report in the browser when an exception occurs
cgitb.enable(display=1) # Changed display argument to 1 to enable report display in browser
You can also save the traceback reports to a file instead of sending them to the browser by setting the `logdir` argument to the directory where you want to store the files, like so:
# Import the cgitb module to enable error reporting
import cgitb
# Enable error reporting with the specified settings
# Set display to 1 to display errors in the browser
# Set logdir to the desired directory to save error reports to a file
cgitb.enable(display=1, logdir='/path/to/logs')
The `context` argument determines how many lines of context will be displayed around the current line in the traceback. The default value is 5 but you can change it to suit your needs:
# Import the cgitb module
import cgitb
# Enable cgitb to display errors and log them to a specified directory
cgitb.enable(display=1, logdir='/path/to/logs')
# Set the number of lines of context to be displayed around the current line in the traceback
context = 20
# Note: The default value for context is 5, but it can be changed to suit specific needs.
If you prefer plain text output instead of HTML, set the `format` argument to ‘text’:
# Import the cgitb module
import cgitb
# Enable cgitb to display errors in the browser
cgitb.enable(display=1, format='text')
# The `format` argument specifies the format of the error output, in this case it is set to 'text' for plain text output instead of HTML.
Now that we’ve enabled cgitb, let’s see how it works in action! Let’s say you have a script called `my_script.py` with the following code:
# This script defines a function called my_function that calculates the result of 10 divided by 3 and returns it
def my_function():
x = 10 / 3 # This line calculates the result of 10 divided by 3 and assigns it to the variable x
return x # This line returns the value of x to be used outside of the function
result = my_function() # This line calls the my_function() and assigns the returned value to the variable result
print(result) # This line prints the value of result, which is the result of 10 divided by 3
If we run this script and divide by zero, cgitb will display a detailed report in the browser with information about the exception:
As you can see, cgitb displays the line number where the error occurred, as well as the values of local variables and arguments to currently running functions. This makes it much easier to debug your code!
With this tool in your arsenal, you’ll be able to tackle those ***** bugs with ease and save yourself hours of frustration.