How to schedule a function to run every hour on Flask?

Question

I have a Flask web hosting with no access to cron command.

How can I execute some Python function every hour?

Answer 1

You can use BackgroundScheduler() from APScheduler package (v3.5.3):

import time
import atexit

from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler


def print_date_time():
    print(time.strftime("%A, %d. %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p"))


scheduler = BackgroundScheduler()
scheduler.add_job(func=print_date_time, trigger="interval", seconds=60)
scheduler.start()

# Shut down the scheduler when exiting the app
atexit.register(lambda: scheduler.shutdown())

Note that two of these schedulers will be launched when Flask is in debug mode. For more information, check out this question.

Answer 2

I'm a little bit new with the concept of application schedulers, but what I found here for APScheduler v3.3.1 , it's something a little bit different. I believe that for the newest versions, the package structure, class names, etc., have changed, so I'm putting here a fresh solution which I made recently, integrated with a basic Flask application:

#!/usr/bin/python3
""" Demonstrating Flask, using APScheduler. """

from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler
from flask import Flask

def sensor():
    """ Function for test purposes. """
    print("Scheduler is alive!")

sched = BackgroundScheduler(daemon=True)
sched.add_job(sensor,'interval',minutes=60)
sched.start()

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/home")
def home():
    """ Function for test purposes. """
    return "Welcome Home :) !"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

I'm also leaving this Gist here, if anyone have interest on updates for this example.

Here are some references, for future readings:

• APScheduler Doc: https://apscheduler.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• daemon=True: https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/threading.html#thread-objects