What is the best way to repeatedly execute a funct

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 calling the python script every minute using a cron, but without requiring that to be set up by the user.

In this question about a cron implemented in Python, the solution appears to effectively just sleep() for x seconds. I don't need such advanced functionality so perhaps something like this would work

while True:
    # Code executed here
    time.sleep(60)

Are there any foreseeable problems with this code?

Answer 1

Here's an adapted version to the code from MestreLion. In addition to the original function, this code:

1) add first_interval used to fire the timer at a specific time(caller need to calculate the first_interval and pass in)

2) solve a race-condition in original code. In the original code, if control thread failed to cancel the running timer("Stop the timer, and cancel the execution of the timer’s action. This will only work if the timer is still in its waiting stage." quoted from https://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html), the timer will run endlessly.

class RepeatedTimer(object):
def __init__(self, first_interval, interval, func, *args, **kwargs):
    self.timer      = None
    self.first_interval = first_interval
    self.interval   = interval
    self.func   = func
    self.args       = args
    self.kwargs     = kwargs
    self.running = False
    self.is_started = False

def first_start(self):
    try:
        # no race-condition here because only control thread will call this method
        # if already started will not start again
        if not self.is_started:
            self.is_started = True
            self.timer = Timer(self.first_interval, self.run)
            self.running = True
            self.timer.start()
    except Exception as e:
        log_print(syslog.LOG_ERR, "timer first_start failed %s %s"%(e.message, traceback.format_exc()))
        raise

def run(self):
    # if not stopped start again
    if self.running:
        self.timer = Timer(self.interval, self.run)
        self.timer.start()
    self.func(*self.args, **self.kwargs)

def stop(self):
    # cancel current timer in case failed it's still OK
    # if already stopped doesn't matter to stop again
    if self.timer:
        self.timer.cancel()
    self.running = False

Answer 2

Just lock your time loop to the system clock. Easy.

import time
starttime=time.time()
while True:
  print "tick"
  time.sleep(60.0 - ((time.time() - starttime) % 60.0))

Answer 3

Here's an update to the code from MestreLion that avoids drifiting over time:

import threading 
import time

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.next_call = time.time()
    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.next_call += self.interval
      self._timer = threading.Timer(self.next_call - time.time(), self._run)
      self._timer.start()
      self.is_running = True

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

Answer 4

One possible answer:

import time
t=time.time()

while True:
    if time.time()-t>10:
        #run your task here
        t=time.time()

Answer 5

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()

Answer 6

I faced a similar problem some time back. May be http://cronus.readthedocs.org might help?

For v0.2, the following snippet works

import cronus.beat as beat

beat.set_rate(2) # 2 Hz
while beat.true():
    # do some time consuming work here
    beat.sleep() # total loop duration would be 0.5 sec