Python – Many threads to write log file at same time in Python

lockingmultithreadingpythonpython-2.x

I am writing a script to retrieve WMI info from many computers at the same time then write this info in a text file:

f = open("results.txt", 'w+') ## to clean the results file before the start


def filesize(asset):  
    f = open("results.txt", 'a+')  
    c = wmi.WMI(asset)  
    wql = 'SELECT FileSize,Name FROM CIM_DataFile where (Drive="D:" OR Drive="E:") and Caption like "%file%"'  
    for item in c.query(wql):  
        print >> f, item.Name.split("\\")[2].strip().upper(), str(item.FileSize)  




class myThread (threading.Thread):  
    def __init__(self,name):  
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)  
        self.name = name  
    def run(self):  
        pythoncom.CoInitialize ()  
        print "Starting " + self.name       
        filesize(self.name)  
        print "Exiting " + self.name  



thread1 = myThread('10.24.2.31')  
thread2 = myThread('10.24.2.32')  
thread3 = myThread('10.24.2.33')  
thread4 = myThread('10.24.2.34')  
thread1.start()  
thread2.start()  
thread3.start()  
thread4.start()

The problem is that all threads writing at the same time.

Best Answer

You can simply create your own locking mechanism to ensure that only one thread is ever writing to a file.

import threading
lock = threading.Lock()

def write_to_file(f, text, file_size):
    lock.acquire() # thread blocks at this line until it can obtain lock

    # in this section, only one thread can be present at a time.
    print >> f, text, file_size

    lock.release()

def filesize(asset):  
    f = open("results.txt", 'a+')  
    c = wmi.WMI(asset)  
    wql = 'SELECT FileSize,Name FROM CIM_DataFile where (Drive="D:" OR Drive="E:") and Caption like "%file%"'  
    for item in c.query(wql):  
        write_to_file(f, item.Name.split("\\")[2].strip().upper(), str(item.FileSize))

You may want to consider placing the lock around the entire for loop for item in c.query(wql): to allow each thread to do a larger chunk of work before releasing the lock.

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