Simple cron job in google app engine (python)

Question

I need help in implementing a simple cron job in GAE (python).

According to what I understood from appengine documentation, I made a file cron.yaml in the application root directory with the following content:

cron:
- description: blah blah
  url: /crontask
  schedule: every 1 minute

And my app.yaml file has the following content:

application: template-123
version: 1
runtime: python27
api_version: 1
threadsafe: true

handlers:
- url: /.*
  script: template-123.app

I made all my application code (cron and other parts) into a single file "template-123.py". In the code I implement cron in the following way:

class CronTask(Handler):

    def  post(self):
        i=25
        number = Birthday(day = i)
        number.put()

And I tell the code to use this class for cron by stating: ('/crontask', CronTask).

However no new entries are uploaded to the datastore (as I believe they should be). And I know that it isn't a problem with the way I'm accessing the data store because when I try to do the same thing manually (upload entries to the data store in my non-cron part of application) it returns with appropriate results.

So I need some guidance as to what might I be doing wrong or missing? Do have to make some more changes to the yaml files or add some other libraries?

Answer 1

Cron uses GET, not POST. Change your def post(self) to def get(self) (or whatever else is appropriate).

Answer 2

Usually python files end in py. the handler should say

script: template-123.py

Test your cron job locally first. You should be able to access localhost:8000/_ah/admin, and click on the Cron Jobs link on the left. It should list all your cron jobs, and you should be able to test them with a link on the page. Debug on dev_appserver first.