Jobs Scheduling

synopsis:

Documentation on creating/using jobs in Django-extensions

Creating jobs works much like management commands work in Django.

Setup

Run

$ python manage.py create_jobs <django_application>

to make a jobs directory inside of an application. The jobs directory will have the following tree:

jobs
├── daily
│   └── __init__.py
├── hourly
│   └── __init__.py
├── monthly
│   └── __init__.py
├── weekly
│   └── __init__.py
├── yearly
│   └── __init__.py
├── __init__.py
└── sample.py

Create a job

A job is a Python script with a mandatory BaseJob class which extends from MinutelyJob, QuarterHourlyJob, HourlyJob, DailyJob, WeeklyJob, MonthlyJob or Yearly. It has one method that must be implemented called execute, which is called when the job is run. The directories hourly, daily, monthly, weekly and yearly are used only to for organisation purpose.

Note: If you want to use QuarterHourlyJob or Minutely job, create python package with name quarter_hourly or minutely respectively (similar to hourly or daily package).

To create your first job you can start copying sample.py. Remember to replace BaseJob with MinutelyJob, QuarterHourlyJob, HourlyJob, DailyJob, WeeklyJob, MonthlyJob or Yearly. Some simple examples are provided by the django_extensions.jobs package.

Note that each job should be in a new python script (within respective directory) and the class implementing the cron should be named Job. Also, __init__.py file is not used for identifying jobs.

Run a job

The following commands are related to jobs:

  • create_jobs, create the directory structure for jobs

  • runjob, run a single job

  • runjobs, run all hourly/daily/weekly/monthly jobs

Use “runjob(s) -l” to list all jobs recognized.

Jobs do not run automatically! You must either run a job manually specifying the exact time on which the command is to be run, or use crontab:

@hourly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs hourly

@daily /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs daily

@weekly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs weekly

@monthly /path/to/my/project/manage.py runjobs monthly