How do you override BaseHTTPRequestHandler log_message() method to log to a file rather than to console (sys.stderr)?

Question

I'm creating a Webservice using BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer

I would like to log the following to be logged to a file rather than to the console. But I have not managed to find a way to do so yet.

10.23.23.19 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:06] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.23.23.19 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:06] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.24.20.14 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:27] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
10.24.20.14 - - [29/Nov/2013 08:39:31] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 -

My Code looks like this:

from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer
from pysimplesoap.server import SoapDispatcher, SOAPHandler
.
# The rest of the code
.
.
httpd = HTTPServer(("", 8059),SOAPHandler)
    httpd.dispatcher = dispatcher
    httpd.serve_forever()

I'm using Python 2.6

Answer 1

If you read the doc or source code for BaseHTTPRequestHandler you'll find that all logging goes thru BaseHTTPRequestHandler.log_message(), which docstring explicitely specifies:

Log an arbitrary message.

This is used by all other logging functions. Override it if you have specific logging wishes.

So the solution is obviously to leave .send_response() alone (obviously you want your response to be sent), and replace .log_message() with either a call to a proper logger (cf http://docs.python.org/2/library/logging.html) which is the clean and flexible way to to handle logging in Python or if you just want an quick hack a write to a filesystem file.