Can I redirect the stdout in python into some sort

Question

I'm using python's ftplib to write a small FTP client, but some of the functions in the package don't return string output, but print to stdout. I want to redirect stdout to an object which I'll be able to read the output from.

I know stdout can be redirected into any regular file with:

stdout = open("file", "a")

But I prefer a method that doesn't uses the local drive.

I'm looking for something like the BufferedReader in Java that can be used to wrap a buffer into a stream.

Answer 1

Use pipe() and write to the appropriate file descriptor.

https://docs.python.org/library/os.html#file-descriptor-operations

Answer 2

Just to add to Ned's answer above: you can use this to redirect output to any object that implements a write(str) method.

This can be used to good effect to "catch" stdout output in a GUI application.

Here's a silly example in PyQt:

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui

class OutputWindow(QtGui.QPlainTextEdit):
    def write(self, txt):
        self.appendPlainText(str(txt))

app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
out = OutputWindow()
sys.stdout=out
out.show()
print "hello world !"

Answer 3

In Python3.6, the StringIO and cStringIO modules are gone, you should use io.StringIO instead.So you should do this like the first answer:

import sys
from io import StringIO

old_stdout = sys.stdout
old_stderr = sys.stderr
my_stdout = sys.stdout = StringIO()
my_stderr = sys.stderr = StringIO()

# blah blah lots of code ...

sys.stdout = self.old_stdout
sys.stderr = self.old_stderr

// if you want to see the value of redirect output, be sure the std output is turn back
print(my_stdout.getvalue())
print(my_stderr.getvalue())

my_stdout.close()
my_stderr.close()

Answer 4

from cStringIO import StringIO # Python3 use: from io import StringIO
import sys

old_stdout = sys.stdout
sys.stdout = mystdout = StringIO()

# blah blah lots of code ...

sys.stdout = old_stdout

# examine mystdout.getvalue()

Answer 5

Starting with Python 2.6 you can use anything implementing the TextIOBase API from the io module as a replacement. This solution also enables you to use sys.stdout.buffer.write() in Python 3 to write (already) encoded byte strings to stdout (see stdout in Python 3). Using StringIO wouldn't work then, because neither sys.stdout.encoding nor sys.stdout.buffer would be available.

A solution using TextIOWrapper:

import sys
from io import TextIOWrapper, BytesIO

# setup the environment
old_stdout = sys.stdout
sys.stdout = TextIOWrapper(BytesIO(), sys.stdout.encoding)

# do something that writes to stdout or stdout.buffer

# get output
sys.stdout.seek(0)      # jump to the start
out = sys.stdout.read() # read output

# restore stdout
sys.stdout.close()
sys.stdout = old_stdout

This solution works for Python 2 >= 2.6 and Python 3.

Please note that our new sys.stdout.write() only accepts unicode strings and sys.stdout.buffer.write() only accepts byte strings. This might not be the case for old code, but is often the case for code that is built to run on Python 2 and 3 without changes, which again often makes use of sys.stdout.buffer.

You can build a slight variation that accepts unicode and byte strings for write():

class StdoutBuffer(TextIOWrapper):
    def write(self, string):
        try:
            return super(StdoutBuffer, self).write(string)
        except TypeError:
            # redirect encoded byte strings directly to buffer
            return super(StdoutBuffer, self).buffer.write(string)

You don't have to set the encoding of the buffer the sys.stdout.encoding, but this helps when using this method for testing/comparing script output.

Answer 6

There is contextlib.redirect_stdout() function in Python 3.4:

import io
from contextlib import redirect_stdout

with io.StringIO() as buf, redirect_stdout(buf):
    print('redirected')
    output = buf.getvalue()

Here's code example that shows how to implement it on older Python versions.