Constantly print Subprocess output while process is running

Question or problem about Python programming:

To launch programs from my Python-scripts, I’m using the following method:

def execute(command):
    process = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
    output = process.communicate()[0]
    exitCode = process.returncode

    if (exitCode == 0):
        return output
    else:
        raise ProcessException(command, exitCode, output)

So when i launch a process like Process.execute(“mvn clean install”), my program waits until the process is finished, and only then i get the complete output of my program. This is annoying if i’m running a process that takes a while to finish.

Can i let my program write the process output line by line, by polling the process output before it finishes in a loop or something?

**[EDIT]
Sorry i didn’t search very well before posting this question. Threading is actually the key. Found an example here which shows how to do it: **
Python Subprocess.Popen from a thread

How to solve the problem:

Solution 1:

You can use iter to process lines as soon as the command outputs them: lines = iter(fd.readline, ""). Here’s a full example showing a typical use case (thanks to @jfs for helping out):

from __future__ import print_function # Only Python 2.x
import subprocess

def execute(cmd):
    popen = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
    for stdout_line in iter(popen.stdout.readline, ""):
        yield stdout_line 
    popen.stdout.close()
    return_code = popen.wait()
    if return_code:
        raise subprocess.CalledProcessError(return_code, cmd)

# Example
for path in execute(["locate", "a"]):
    print(path, end="")

Solution 2:

Ok i managed to solve it without threads (any suggestions why using threads would be better are appreciated) by using a snippet from this question Intercepting stdout of a subprocess while it is running

def execute(command):
    process = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

    # Poll process for new output until finished
    while True:
        nextline = process.stdout.readline()
        if nextline == '' and process.poll() is not None:
            break
        sys.stdout.write(nextline)
        sys.stdout.flush()

    output = process.communicate()[0]
    exitCode = process.returncode

    if (exitCode == 0):
        return output
    else:
        raise ProcessException(command, exitCode, output)

Solution 3:

To print subprocess’ output line-by-line as soon as its stdout buffer is flushed in Python 3:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, CalledProcessError

with Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, bufsize=1, universal_newlines=True) as p:
    for line in p.stdout:
        print(line, end='') # process line here

if p.returncode != 0:
    raise CalledProcessError(p.returncode, p.args)

Notice: you do not need p.poll() — the loop ends when eof is reached. And you do not need iter(p.stdout.readline, '') — the read-ahead bug is fixed in Python 3.

See also, Python: read streaming input from subprocess.communicate().

Solution 4:

There is actually a really simple way to do this when you just want to print the output:

import subprocess
import sys

def execute(command):
    subprocess.check_call(command, stdout=sys.stdout, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

Here we’re simply pointing the subprocess to our own stdout, and using existing succeed or exception api.

Solution 5:

@tokland

tried your code and corrected it for 3.4 and windows
dir.cmd is a simple dir command, saved as cmd-file

import subprocess
c = "dir.cmd"

def execute(command):
    popen = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,bufsize=1)
    lines_iterator = iter(popen.stdout.readline, b"")
    while popen.poll() is None:
        for line in lines_iterator:
            nline = line.rstrip()
            print(nline.decode("latin"), end = "\r\n",flush =True) # yield line

execute(c)

Hope this helps!