Can I redirect the stdout in python into some sort of string buffer?

Question

I\'m using python\'s ftplib to write a small FTP client, but some of the functions in the package don\'t return string output, but print to stdout.

Answer 1

A context manager for python3:

import sys
from io import StringIO


class RedirectedStdout:
    def __init__(self):
        self._stdout = None
        self._string_io = None

    def __enter__(self):
        self._stdout = sys.stdout
        sys.stdout = self._string_io = StringIO()
        return self

    def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
        sys.stdout = self._stdout

    def __str__(self):
        return self._string_io.getvalue()

use like this:

>>> with RedirectedStdout() as out:
>>>     print('asdf')
>>>     s = str(out)
>>>     print('bsdf')
>>> print(s, out)
'asdf\n' 'asdf\nbsdf\n'