Where in django is the default 500 traceback rendered so that I can use it to create my own logs?

Question

I would like to use it to generate html log files inside the process_exception() method of my custom middleware class, e.g:

• Exception caught.
• process_exception(request) called.
• process_exception calls whatever function returns default error html.
• process_exception writes returned html to logs folder somewhere where django server is running.

I know that Django is capable of sending emails for these exceptions but i'd rather not use this. I'm working on a RESTful application using JSON and so it feels more appropriate to return a json string stating error 500 and then placing the html somewhere else.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry maybe I need to clarify: I don't want to create my own 500.html, I want to use the one that django uses when Debug=True. i.e. generate the error file and place it in a log folder.

Thanks to Mark for the help - here is my solution for anyone interested:

import logging
import os
import settings
import sys
import datetime

from response import get_json_response
from django.views.debug import ExceptionReporter

logging.config.dictConfig(settings.LOGGING)
LOGGER = logging.getLogger('console_logger')

class LoggingMiddleware(object):

    def process_exception(self,request,exception):
        exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback = sys.exc_info()
        er = ExceptionReporter(request, exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback)
        time = str(datetime.datetime.now())
        file_path = os.path.join(settings.LOG_FOLDER, "{}.html".format(time))
        LOGGER.error("Writing error 500 traceback to %s" % file_path)
        file_handle = open(file_path,'w')
        file_handle.write(er.get_traceback_html())
        file_handle.close()
        return get_json_response(500,"HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error")

The code intercepts any exceptions, uses the sys module and djangos default error template to generate the nicely formatted traceback/exception info page and then places this in a log folder before returning a JSON object stating that there has been a http error 500.

Answer 1

The 500 traceback page uses a template string (TECHNICAL_500_TEMPLATE) which is hard coded into django.views.debug. The report is generated by an ExceptionReporter class which is also included in django.views.debug which you should be able to re-purpose for your own log generation.