profiling a method of a class in Python using cProfile?

Question

I'd like to profile a method of a function in Python, using cProfile. I tried the following:

import cProfile as profile

# Inside the class method...
profile.run("self.myMethod()", "output_file")

But it does not work. How can I call a self.method with "run"?

Answer 1

EDIT: Sorry, didn't realise that the profile call was in a class method.

run just tries to exec the string you pass it. If self isn't bound to anything in the scope of the profiler you are using, you can't use it in run! Use the runctx method to pass in the local and global variables in the scope of the call to the profiler:

>>> import time
>>> import cProfile as profile
>>> class Foo(object):
...     def bar(self):
...             profile.runctx('self.baz()', globals(), locals())
...
...     def baz(self):
...             time.sleep(1)
...             print 'slept'
...             time.sleep(2)
...
>>> foo = Foo()
>>> foo.bar()
slept
         5 function calls in 2.999 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.999    2.999 <stdin>:5(baz)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.999    2.999 <string>:1(<module>)
        1    0.000    0.000    0.000    0.000 {method 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler' objects}
        2    2.999    1.499    2.999    1.499 {time.sleep}

Notice the last line: time.sleep is what's taking up the time.