Question

How do I have a python script that contains functions say function1, function2, and function3 that I want to execute every 24 hours as a separate process/thread? So say…

Main Application executes function1, function2
function1 and function2 executes some long running process in a separate threads from the main application
once function 1 finishes its task, reports back to main application that it completed

Main application prints “Done with Function 1.”
once function 2 finishes its task, reports back to main application that it completed

24 hours after function 1 finishes… the main app will execute it again
6 hours after function 2 finishes… the main app will execute the function again

Note that the functions would be doing similar things, but the data source is different, so having separate apps and doing a cron is undesirable.
Examples would be great.

Answer 1

If you need it inside the application, alarm() is a good place to start, and handler should fork() itself off. If you need to synchronize different functions at different intervals, PriorityQueue is great, as you can only maintain one alarm. There is a working alarm() example in the docs.

Otherwise, I’d probably go with separate applications, not functions, and trigger them by crontab.