When doing oop in python where should I add the logger

Question

When doing oop in python where should I add the logger.

Should I add it:

• before the class Rocket(): and give it a file global scope or
• after the class Rocket(): and give it a class scope.

Syntax allows for both. But which would be consider more correct in the python culture.

Assume I have a class

class Rocket():
# Rocket simulates a rocket ship for a game,
# or a physics simulation.
def __init__(self):
 # Each rocket has an (x,y) position.
 self.x = 0
 self.y = 0
def move_up(self):
 # Increment the y-position of the rocket.
 self.y += 1

• whatsisname: Logging is an area that bends the rules quite a bit.

Answer 1

This doesn't matter very much. Logging is largely orthogonal to the design of your code, so it doesn't always clearly belong to a particular class or module.

However, many logging frameworks allow you to filter by the logger name, where this logger name is typically the fully qualified name of a class or module. In that case, think about whether you would only filter for that module or also for that particular class. Per-class loggers might also be more appropriate if you want inherited classes to use the same logger, but I would find that unusual.

In Python, it is typically more convenient to use module-level global variables instead of class-variables because of the scoping rules. E.g. in your methods you would have to access a class member as Rocket.LOGGER, whereas LOGGER would refer to a module-level variable. Also, class level variables are visible as instance variables. E.g. we could then access some_rocket.LOGGER. It is of course possible to make the logger pseudo-private by giving it a double-underscore name, but where possible the better approach is to avoid objects/classes.