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 ended up using the schedule module. The API is nice.

import schedule
import time

def job():
    print("I'm working...")

schedule.every(10).minutes.do(job)
schedule.every().hour.do(job)
schedule.every().day.at("10:30").do(job)
schedule.every(5).to(10).minutes.do(job)
schedule.every().monday.do(job)
schedule.every().wednesday.at("13:15").do(job)
schedule.every().minute.at(":17").do(job)

while True:
    schedule.run_pending()
    time.sleep(1)

Answer 2

If your program doesn't have a event loop already, use the sched module, which implements a general purpose event scheduler.

import sched, time
s = sched.scheduler(time.time, time.sleep)
def do_something(sc): 
    print("Doing stuff...")
    # do your stuff
    s.enter(60, 1, do_something, (sc,))

s.enter(60, 1, do_something, (s,))
s.run()

If you're already using an event loop library like asyncio, trio, tkinter, PyQt5, gobject, kivy, and many others - just schedule the task using your existing event loop library's methods, instead.

Answer 3

I use Tkinter after() method, which doesn't "steal the game" (like the sched module that was presented earlier), i.e. it allows other things to run in parallel:

import Tkinter

def do_something1():
  global n1
  n1 += 1
  if n1 == 6: # (Optional condition)
    print "* do_something1() is done *"; return
  # Do your stuff here
  # ...
  print "do_something1() "+str(n1)
  tk.after(1000, do_something1)

def do_something2(): 
  global n2
  n2 += 1
  if n2 == 6: # (Optional condition)
    print "* do_something2() is done *"; return
  # Do your stuff here
  # ...
  print "do_something2() "+str(n2)
  tk.after(500, do_something2)

tk = Tkinter.Tk(); 
n1 = 0; n2 = 0
do_something1()
do_something2()
tk.mainloop()

do_something1() and do_something2() can run in parallel and in whatever interval speed. Here, the 2nd one will be executed twice as fast.Note also that I have used a simple counter as a condition to terminate either function. You can use whatever other contition you like or none if you what a function to run until the program terminates (e.g. a clock).

Answer 4

If you want a non-blocking way to execute your function periodically, instead of a blocking infinite loop I'd use a threaded timer. This way your code can keep running and perform other tasks and still have your function called every n seconds. I use this technique a lot for printing progress info on long, CPU/Disk/Network intensive tasks.

Here's the code I've posted in a similar question, with start() and stop() control:

from threading import Timer

class RepeatedTimer(object):
    def __init__(self, interval, function, *args, **kwargs):
        self._timer     = None
        self.interval   = interval
        self.function   = function
        self.args       = args
        self.kwargs     = kwargs
        self.is_running = False
        self.start()

    def _run(self):
        self.is_running = False
        self.start()
        self.function(*self.args, **self.kwargs)

    def start(self):
        if not self.is_running:
            self._timer = Timer(self.interval, self._run)
            self._timer.start()
            self.is_running = True

    def stop(self):
        self._timer.cancel()
        self.is_running = False

Usage:

from time import sleep

def hello(name):
    print "Hello %s!" % name

print "starting..."
rt = RepeatedTimer(1, hello, "World") # it auto-starts, no need of rt.start()
try:
    sleep(5) # your long-running job goes here...
finally:
    rt.stop() # better in a try/finally block to make sure the program ends!

Features:

• Standard library only, no external dependencies
• start() and stop() are safe to call multiple times even if the timer has already started/stopped
• function to be called can have positional and named arguments
• You can change interval anytime, it will be effective after next run. Same for args, kwargs and even function!

Answer 5

You might want to consider Twisted which is a Python networking library that implements the Reactor Pattern.

from twisted.internet import task, reactor

timeout = 60.0 # Sixty seconds

def doWork():
    #do work here
    pass

l = task.LoopingCall(doWork)
l.start(timeout) # call every sixty seconds

reactor.run()

While "while True: sleep(60)" will probably work Twisted probably already implements many of the features that you will eventually need (daemonization, logging or exception handling as pointed out by bobince) and will probably be a more robust solution

Answer 6

This seems much simpler than accepted solution - does it have shortcomings I'm not considering? Came here looking for some dead-simple copy pasta.

import threading, time

def print_every_n_seconds(n=2):
    while True:
        print(time.ctime())
        time.sleep(n)
    
thread = threading.Thread(target=print_every_n_seconds, daemon=True)
thread.start()

Which asynchronously outputs.

#Tue Oct 16 17:29:40 2018
#Tue Oct 16 17:29:42 2018
#Tue Oct 16 17:29:44 2018

This does have drift. If the task being run takes appreciable amount of time, then the interval becomes 2 seconds + task time, so if you need precise scheduling then this is not for you.**

Note the daemon=True flag means this thread won't block the app from shutting down. For example, had issue where pytest would hang indefinitely after running tests waiting for this thead to cease.