Simple python scheduled tasks script that runs once daily

Question

I want to execute a python script daily and thereby want to schedules task as follows.

The idea is that the script will run once daily, and the script will then decide what tasks to be done today.

The reason is that I can't use cron or windows scheduled task on my environment.

The question is that, is there any better idea?

from datetime import datetime
import os
from sheduled_tasks import daily_task1, daily_task2, weekly_task, monthly_tasks
tasks = {} # or open from saved pickel file
schedule = {
 1: [daily_task1, daily_task2],
 7: [weekly_task],
 30: [monthly_tasks],
}
for delta, stasks in schedule.items():
 for task in stasks:
 name = task.__name__
 if ((task not in tasks) or
 (datetime.now() - tasks[name]).days >= delta):
 task()
 tasks[task.name] = datetime.now().replace(hour=6)
# pickle tasks

• FirefoxMetzger: does your script get executed once daily, or does it just sit on your OS as a process 24/7?
• Reinderien: What's your environment? Surely there's a better solution.
• Rahul Patel: @FirefoxMetzger: Executed once daily. It doesn't sit on your OS as a process 24/7.
• Rahul Patel: @Reinderien: Custom python (Linux based) environment without bash or anything. Just once daily python only task. I can request any python module from pypi.
• FirefoxMetzger: I see. Should it be 'every week/month/year starting from the first invocation' or 'regularly in a weekly/monthly/yearly interval'?

Answer 1

You can get rid of doing any I/O and make your code cleaner in the process.

from datetime import datetime
from sheduled_tasks import daily_task1, daily_task2, weekly_task, monthly_tasks
schedule = {
 1: [daily_task1, daily_task2],
 7: [weekly_task],
 30: [monthly_tasks],
}
# this could also be the date of first invocation, just change the timestamp
arbitrary_date = datetime.fromtimestamp(1234567890)
days_past = (datetime.now() - arbitrary_date).days
for delay, tasks in schedule.items():
 if days_past % delay == 0:
 [task() for task in tasks]

• Rahul Patel: It took a while for me to understand. This is perfect for my continuously running server with power backup. I think for non-power backup server, it may fail. Thanks for simplification.
• FirefoxMetzger: @RahulPatel That depends if you expect your server to fail for more than 24h. To comment on that, however, we would need more information about the actual environment than just the snippet and 'it will be executed once a day', because the latter is not the case if you have more than 24h downtime.
• Rahul Patel: Agreed. Most of the time, the server is not dead for 24 hour.