Schedule tasks using django-celery based on user input

Question

I am building a reporting portal using django. In this portal I need to give users the ability to schedule reports to run on a reoccurring basis. I have been researching django-celery and understand that you can use the periodic_task decorator to schedule a reoccurring task but in all the examples I have seen the cron schedule information is hard coded into the decorator.

@periodic_task(run_every=crontab(hours=7, minute=30, day_of_week="mon"))

Is there a way using django-celery to schedule a reoccurring task dynamically based on input from a user?

For example, a user uses a form to select the report they want run, provide all the parameters required by the report and the schedule when they want the report run on. Once I have processed the form is there a method or function I can call to add a run_report task to a schedule? If so is there a way to retrieve all the current schedules stored in the database so they can be displayed?

Answer 1

Tak a look at djcelery in the admin-interface: http://localhost:8000/admin/djcelery/

Try if you can build the required task-setup there (using crontabs/intervals/periodic tasks) If yes there is a big chance that you can build this up quickly..

Answer 2

http://celery.readthedocs.org/en/latest/userguide/calling.html

eg:-

from celery import task

@task.task(ignore_result=True)
def T(message=None ):
    print message

.

T.apply_async(countdown=10, message="hi")

executes 10 seconds from now.

T.apply_async(eta=now + timedelta(seconds=10),message="hi")

executes 10 seconds from now, specifed using eta

T.apply_async(countdown=60, expires=120,message="hi")

executes in one minute from now, but expires after 2 minutes.