Logging

GAMA makes use of the default Python logging module. This means logs can be captured at different levels, and handled by one of several StreamHandlers.

The most common logging use cases are to write a comprehensive log to file, as well as print important messages to stdout. Writing log messages to stdout is directly supported by GAMA through the verbosity hyperparameter (which defaults to logging.WARNING).

By default GAMA will also save several different logs. This can be turned off by the store hyperparameter. The store hyperparameter allows you to store the logs, as well as models and predictions. By default logs are kept (which includes evaluation data), but models and predictions are discarded.

The output_directory hyperparameter determines where this data is stored, by default a unique name is generated. In the output directory you will find three files and a subdirectory:

  • ‘evaluations.log’: a csv file (with ‘;’ as separator) in which each evaluation is stored.

  • ‘gama.log’: A loosely structured file with general (human readable) information of the GAMA run.

  • ‘resources.log’: A record of the memory usage for each of GAMA’s processes over time.

  • cache directory: contains evaluated models and predictions, only if store is ‘all’ or ‘models’

If you want other behavior, the logging module offers you great flexibility on making your own variations. The following script writes any log messages of logging.DEBUG or up to both file and console:

import logging
import sys
from gama import GamaClassifier

gama_log = logging.getLogger('gama')
gama_log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

fh_log = logging.FileHandler('logfile.txt')
fh_log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
gama_log.addHandler(fh_log)

# The verbosity hyperparameter sets up an StreamHandler to `stdout`.
automl = GamaClassifier(max_total_time=180, verbosity=logging.DEBUG, store="nothing")

Running the above script will create the ‘logfile.txt’ file with all log messages that could also be seen in the console. An overview the log levels:

  • DEBUG: Messages for developers.

  • INFO: General information about the optimization process.

  • WARNING: Serious errors that do not prohibit GAMA from running to completion (but results could be suboptimal).

  • ERROR: Errors which prevent GAMA from running to completion.

As described in Dashboard the files in the output directory can be used to generate visualizations about the optimization process.