How should I verify a log message when testing Python code under nose?

I'm trying to write a simple unit test that will verify that, under a certain condition, a class in my application will log an error via the standard logging API. I can't work out what the cleanest way to test this situation is.

I know that nose already captures logging output through it's logging plugin, but this seems to be intended as a reporting and debugging aid for failed tests.

The two ways to do this I can see are:

Mock out the logging module, either in a piecemeal way (mymodule.logging = mockloggingmodule) or with a proper mocking library.
Write or use an existing nose plugin to capture the output and verify it.

If I go for the former approach, I'd like to know what the cleanest way to reset the global state to what it was before I mocked out the logging module.

Looking forward to your hints and tips on this one...

Solution

I used to mock loggers, but in this situation I found best to use logging handlers, so I wrote this one based on the document suggested by jkp(now dead, but cached on Internet Archive)

class MockLoggingHandler(logging.Handler):
    """Mock logging handler to check for expected logs."""

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.reset()
        logging.Handler.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

    def emit(self, record):
        self.messages[record.levelname.lower()].append(record.getMessage())

    def reset(self):
        self.messages = {
            'debug': [],
            'info': [],
            'warning': [],
            'error': [],
            'critical': [],
        }