Scholar creates empty log file

[ipeirotis]

See #280

[andres-fr]

Hi!

And thanks for the great lib. Regarding the linked issues, I agree that a library shouldn't claim control of the user's filesystem. This not only can be inconvenient/annoying, but could also cause real trouble e.g. when running on locations with restricted permissions. I think logging files should be opt-in, and the user should be able to specify the location. This can be achieved as follows:

if no location is given, don't log (default). If a location is explicitly given, try to log there, and warn/crash if there are any issues with that location.

Interestingly, the analogous Python library for the Scopus database had this exact problem. I just made a PR there with a similar opt-in rationale, you can find it here: ElsevierDev/elsapy#65). If this approach is welcome I can propose a similar PR here.

In the meantime, here is a quick workaround:

1. Locate the filename="scholar.log" text at the _proxy_generator.py and _navigator.py files.

2. Remove the filename="scholar.log" part, leave the rest

That seems to work just fine on my end. As for real workarounds, I think the lib could provide a function like this (untested):

def log_to_file(abspath, logger_names=None):
    """
    """
    logging.basicConfig(filename=abspath)

The user could then call scholarly.log_to_file("some/path.log"). The only potential issue I see with this is that maybe once a logger is created, basisConfig won't alter it? Anyone knows about this?

Cheers,
Andres

[arunkannawadi]

Is this still an issue? AFAIK, scholarly by itself does not create a log file, but I have seen geckodriver does, and the latter is outside of the scope.

[andres-fr]

I don't think it is, just tested it with scholarly==1.4.5 and no file was generated.
Furthermore, I don't know about geckodriver but the lines that I referred to in my previous comment can't be found anymore in master, so I assume this was specifically fixed.

Feel free to close!

[arunkannawadi]

Great, thanks for confirming. Closing the issue.