How to execute a function asynchronously every 60 seconds in Python?

Question

I want to execute a function every 60 seconds on Python but I don't want to be blocked meanwhile.

How can I do it asynchronously?

import threading import time  def f():     print("hello world")     threading.Timer(3, f).start()  if __name__ == '__main__':     f()         time.sleep(20) 

With this code, the function f is executed every 3 seconds within the 20 seconds time.time. At the end it gives an error and I think that it is because the threading.timer has not been canceled.

How can I cancel it?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You could try the threading.Timer class: http://docs.python.org/library/threading.html#timer-objects.

import threading  def f(f_stop):     # do something here ...     if not f_stop.is_set():         # call f() again in 60 seconds         threading.Timer(60, f, [f_stop]).start()  f_stop = threading.Event() # start calling f now and every 60 sec thereafter f(f_stop)  # stop the thread when needed #f_stop.set() 

Answer 2

The simplest way is to create a background thread that runs something every 60 seconds. A trivial implementation is:

class BackgroundTimer(Thread):       def run(self):       while 1:         Time.sleep(60)         # do something   # ... SNIP ... # Inside your main thread # ... SNIP ...  timer = BackgroundTimer() timer.start() 

Obviously, this if the "do something" takes a long time, you'll need to accommodate for it in your sleep statement. But this serves as a good approximation.