A non-blocking read on a subprocess.PIPE in Python

Question

I\'m using the subprocess module to start a subprocess and connect to its output stream (standard output). I want to be able to execute non-blocking reads on its standard ou

Answer 1

In my case I needed a logging module that catches the output from the background applications and augments it(adding time-stamps, colors, etc.).

I ended up with a background thread that does the actual I/O. Following code is only for POSIX platforms. I stripped non-essential parts.

If someone is going to use this beast for long runs consider managing open descriptors. In my case it was not a big problem.

# -*- python -*-
import fcntl
import threading
import sys, os, errno
import subprocess

class Logger(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, *modules):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        try:
            from select import epoll, EPOLLIN
            self.__poll = epoll()
            self.__evt = EPOLLIN
            self.__to = -1
        except:
            from select import poll, POLLIN
            print 'epoll is not available'
            self.__poll = poll()
            self.__evt = POLLIN
            self.__to = 100
        self.__fds = {}
        self.daemon = True
        self.start()

    def run(self):
        while True:
            events = self.__poll.poll(self.__to)
            for fd, ev in events:
                if (ev&self.__evt) != self.__evt:
                    continue
                try:
                    self.__fds[fd].run()
                except Exception, e:
                    print e

    def add(self, fd, log):
        assert not self.__fds.has_key(fd)
        self.__fds[fd] = log
        self.__poll.register(fd, self.__evt)

class log:
    logger = Logger()

    def __init__(self, name):
        self.__name = name
        self.__piped = False

    def fileno(self):
        if self.__piped:
            return self.write
        self.read, self.write = os.pipe()
        fl = fcntl.fcntl(self.read, fcntl.F_GETFL)
        fcntl.fcntl(self.read, fcntl.F_SETFL, fl | os.O_NONBLOCK)
        self.fdRead = os.fdopen(self.read)
        self.logger.add(self.read, self)
        self.__piped = True
        return self.write

    def __run(self, line):
        self.chat(line, nl=False)

    def run(self):
        while True:
            try: line = self.fdRead.readline()
            except IOError, exc:
                if exc.errno == errno.EAGAIN:
                    return
                raise
            self.__run(line)

    def chat(self, line, nl=True):
        if nl: nl = '\n'
        else: nl = ''
        sys.stdout.write('[%s] %s%s' % (self.__name, line, nl))

def system(command, param=[], cwd=None, env=None, input=None, output=None):
    args = [command] + param
    p = subprocess.Popen(args, cwd=cwd, stdout=output, stderr=output, stdin=input, env=env, bufsize=0)
    p.wait()

ls = log('ls')
ls.chat('go')
system("ls", ['-l', '/'], output=ls)

date = log('date')
date.chat('go')
system("date", output=date)