README.md

Tracestack

Instantly search your Python error messages on the web.

Features

• Integrate tracestack into your code in seconds, or run it from the command line
• You can automatically search every error, get prompted to search after each error, or just search your latest error.
• Compatible with Python 2 and 3
• Can search for answers on:
  • Google, limited to stackoverflow.com (default)
  • Google, searching the entire web
  • StackOverflow's own search engine

Installation

$ pip install tracestack

>>> import tracestack

Uses and Examples

Do a post-mortem autopsy of your last exception ...

>>> 1 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero

>>> tracestack.pm()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Searching this error message on Stack Overflow (using Google)...

... or catch all future exceptions ...

>>> tracestack.on()
>>> 1 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Searching this error message on Stack Overflow (using Google)...

>>> tracestack.off()

... or catch exceptions in only one function ...

from tracestack import trace

>>> @trace
>>> def divide_by_zero():
...     1 / 0

... or in any Python script run from the command line ...

$ tracestack manage.py runserver

... or in a read-evaluate-print loop ...

$ tracestack
Python 2.7.6 (default, Sep  9 2014, 15:04:36) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.39)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
(TracestackConsole)
>>> 1 / 0

Options

usage: tracestack [-h] [-p] [-e ENGINE] [SCRIPT] [ARGUMENTS [ARGUMENTS ...]]

instantly search your Python error messages on the web

positional arguments:
  SCRIPT                the Python script
  ARGUMENTS             any arguments to the script

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p, --prompt          prompt the user rather than immediately searching
  -e ENGINE, --engine ENGINE
                        the search engine to use:
                          'default': Google search limited to stackoverflow.com
                          'google': Google search of the full web
                          'stackoverflow': StackOverflow site search

In addition to being used on the command line, any of these arguments can be passed to the pm, on, and trace functions:

>>> tracestack.on(prompt=True)
>>> 1 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Hit spacebar to search this error message on Stack Overflow (using Google): 

>>> 1 / 0
>>> tracestack.pm(engine="google")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Searching this error message on the web (using Google)...

>>> @tracestack.trace(engine="stackoverflow")
>>> def divide_by_zero():
...     1 / 0
...
>>> divide_by_zero()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "tracestack/decorators.py", line 26, in wrapper
    result = func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in divide_by_zero
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Searching this error message on Stack Overflow...

Excellent Alternatives

• lukasschwab/Stackit
  • search and browse StackOverflow in the command line
  • pipe error messages directly into queries
• gleitz/howdoi
  • get programming answers to plaintext questions in the command line
  • works using inexplicable Jedi magic
• SylvainDe/DidYouMean-Python
  • auto-suggests fixes to your errors based on common mistakes
  • also possibly magic
• ajalt/fuckitpy
  • makes sure your Python code runs "whether it has any right to or not"
  • please do not use this
• dgrtwo/tracestack
  • original tracestack package for the R language
  • written on a phone