Swap print statements for real logging

Print statements are fine for a five-line script and useless once the codebase grows past a page.

BeginnerRead 5 minDoing: 20 minutes5 steps

What you'll have at the end

A script that reports its own progress and failures through Python's logging module, every line timestamped and written to a log file that survives after the run ends.

Before you start

You need

A Python script you can already run, one that reports what it's doing with plain print calls, whether you run it by hand or on a schedule.

Not covered

Centralizing logs from many services into one search platform, and structured JSON logging for machine parsing, both stay out of scope: this is about getting one script's own logging turned on and trustworthy first.

Leans on

Turn print calls into a real, visible log

Swap print statements for named logger calls
Configure logging once at your entry point
Send logs to a rotating file

Make the record trustworthy

Capture full tracebacks on every failure
Stop imported modules from doubling your logs

Where to go next

Keep a script running when one row in the file is bad

for a run that needs to skip one bad row and keep going, a different kind of resilience from getting its own events on record

Checked 25 Aug 2026

Part of the Python cookbook