how to measure execution time of functions (automatically) in Python

Question

I need to have a base class which I will use to inherit other classes which I would like to measure execution time of its functions.

So intead of having something like this:

class Worker():     def doSomething(self):         start = time.time()         ... do something         elapsed = (time.time() - start)         print "doSomething() took ", elapsed, " time to finish"  #outputs: doSomething() took XX time to finish 

I would like to have something like this:

class Worker(BaseClass):     def doSomething(self):         ... do something  #outputs the same: doSomething() took XX time to finish 

So the BaseClass needs to dealing with measuring time

Answer 1

One way to do this would be with a decorator (PEP for decorators) (first of a series of tutorial articles on decorators). Here's an example that does what you want.

from functools import wraps from time import time  def timed(f):   @wraps(f)   def wrapper(*args, **kwds):     start = time()     result = f(*args, **kwds)     elapsed = time() - start     print "%s took %d time to finish" % (f.__name__, elapsed)     return result   return wrapper 

This is an example of its use

@timed def somefunction(countto):   for i in xrange(countto):     pass   return "Done" 

To show how it works I called the function from the python prompt:

>>> timedec.somefunction(10000000) somefunction took 0 time to finish 'Done' >>> timedec.somefunction(100000000) somefunction took 2 time to finish 'Done' >>> timedec.somefunction(1000000000) somefunction took 22 time to finish 'Done' 

Answer 2

Have you checked the "profile" module?

I.e. are you sure you need to implement your own custom framework instead of using the default profiling mechanism for the language?

You could also google for "python hotshot" for a similar solution.