How can I disable logging while running unit tests

Question

I am using a simple unit test based test runner to test my Django application.

My application itself is configured to use a basic logger in settings.py using:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)

And in my application code using:

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
logger.setLevel(getattr(settings, 'LOG_LEVEL', logging.DEBUG))

However, when running unittests, I'd like to disable logging so that it doesn't clutter my test result output. Is there a simple way to turn off logging in a global way, so that the application specific loggers aren't writing stuff out to the console when I run tests?

Answer 1

Sometimes you want the logs and sometimes not. I have this code in my settings.py

import sys

if '--no-logs' in sys.argv:
    print('> Disabling logging levels of CRITICAL and below.')
    sys.argv.remove('--no-logs')
    logging.disable(logging.CRITICAL)

So if you run your test with the --no-logs options you'll get only the critical logs:

$ python ./manage.py tests --no-logs
> Disabling logging levels of CRITICAL and below.

It's very helpful if you want speedup the tests on your continuous integration flow.

Answer 2

logging.disable(logging.CRITICAL)

will disable all logging calls with levels less severe than or equal to CRITICAL. Logging can be re-enabled with

logging.disable(logging.NOTSET)