Django Background Task

Question

I need to populate a SQLite database every few minutes in Django, but I want to serve stale data until the data is available for the database to be updated. (i.e. I don't want to block for the data to be gathered; the only time I can block is if there is a lock on the database, during which I have no choice.)

I also don't want to install a separate program or library.

How would I go about setting up another thread that could call save() on a bunch of models, without running into threading issues?

Answer 1

If you're looking for a lightweight solution for just executing stuff in background rather than a full-blown task management system, take a look at django-utils. It includes, among other things, an @async function decorator that will make a function execute asynchronously in a separate thread.

Use it like this:

from djutils.decorators import async

@async
def load_data_async():
    # this will be executed in a separate thread
    load_data()

Then you can call either the load_data_async function for background, or the normal load_data function for blocking execution.

Just make sure to install a version before 2.0, since that lacks the @async decorator.

Note: If even installing django-utils would be too much, you can simply download it and include the few required files in your project.