What is the best way to repeatedly execute a function every x seconds?

Question

I want to repeatedly execute a function in Python every 60 seconds forever (just like an NSTimer in Objective C). This code will run as a daemon and is effectively like call

Answer 1

I use this to cause 60 events per hour with most events occurring at the same number of seconds after the whole minute:

import math
import time
import random

TICK = 60 # one minute tick size
TICK_TIMING = 59 # execute on 59th second of the tick
TICK_MINIMUM = 30 # minimum catch up tick size when lagging

def set_timing():

    now = time.time()
    elapsed = now - info['begin']
    minutes = math.floor(elapsed/TICK)
    tick_elapsed = now - info['completion_time']
    if (info['tick']+1) > minutes:
        wait = max(0,(TICK_TIMING-(time.time() % TICK)))
        print ('standard wait: %.2f' % wait)
        time.sleep(wait)
    elif tick_elapsed < TICK_MINIMUM:
        wait = TICK_MINIMUM-tick_elapsed
        print ('minimum wait: %.2f' % wait)
        time.sleep(wait)
    else:
        print ('skip set_timing(); no wait')
    drift = ((time.time() - info['begin']) - info['tick']*TICK -
        TICK_TIMING + info['begin']%TICK)
    print ('drift: %.6f' % drift)

info['tick'] = 0
info['begin'] = time.time()
info['completion_time'] = info['begin'] - TICK

while 1:

    set_timing()

    print('hello world')

    #random real world event
    time.sleep(random.random()*TICK_MINIMUM)

    info['tick'] += 1
    info['completion_time'] = time.time()

Depending upon actual conditions you might get ticks of length:

60,60,62,58,60,60,120,30,30,60,60,60,60,60...etc.

but at the end of 60 minutes you'll have 60 ticks; and most of them will occur at the correct offset to the minute you prefer.

On my system I get typical drift of < 1/20th of a second until need for correction arises.

The advantage of this method is resolution of clock drift; which can cause issues if you're doing things like appending one item per tick and you expect 60 items appended per hour. Failure to account for drift can cause secondary indications like moving averages to consider data too deep into the past resulting in faulty output.