timer2 - Schedule Python functions.

Version

0.1.0

Introduction

The timer2 module lets you schedule Python functions at specific times, or at an interval. It can be used as a replacement to threading.Timer, the difference is that timer2 is always only using a single thread (unless you manually start more of them)

You should never use this to apply expensive operations, as this would not be effective when running in a single thread, rather you should make the timer move the operations to a execution pool (like a thread/multiprocessing pool, or maybe sending a message):

>>> pool = multiprocessing.Pool()
>>> timer2.apply_after(10000, pool.apply_async, (expensive_fun, ))

Documentation

Timer is using Sphinx, and the latest documentation is available at GitHub:

http://ask.github.com/timer2

Installation

You can install timer2 either via the Python Package Index (PyPI) or from source.

To install using pip,:

$ pip install timer2

To install using easy_install,:

$ easy_install timer2

If you have downloaded a source tarball you can install it by doing the following,:

$ python setup.py build
# python setup.py install # as root

Examples

Apply function after n msecs:

>>> import timer2
>>> timer2.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

Apply function every n msecs:

>>> timer2.apply_interval(msecs, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

Apply function at a specific date (a datetime object):

>>> timer2.apply_at(datetime, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

Cancelling timers

The apply_* functions returns a timer2.Entry instance, you can use this to cancel the execution:

>>> tref = timer2.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs)
>>> tref.cancel()

Running custom Timer threads

When using the module interface a default timer thread is started as soon as you schedule something. If you want to keep track of the thread manually, you can use the timer2.Timer class:

>>> timer = timer2.Timer()
>>> timer.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs)
>>> timer.stop() # stops the thread and joins it.

Bug tracker

If you have any suggestions, bug reports or annoyances please report them to our issue tracker at http://github.com/ask/timer2/issues/

Contributing

Development of timer2 happens at Github: http://github.com/ask/timer2

You are highly encouraged to participate in the development. If you don't like Github (for some reason) you're welcome to send regular patches.

License

This software is licensed under the New BSD License. See the LICENSE file in the top distribution directory for the full license text.