Question

I was trying to create a polling script in python that starts when another python script starts and then keeps supplying data back to this script.

I can obviously write an infinite loop but is that the right way to go about it? I might loose control over how the functions work and how many times a function should be called in an hour.

Edit:

What I am trying to accomplish is to poll the REST API of twitter and get new mentions and people who follow me. I obviously can’t keep polling because I will run out of API requests per hour. Thus, the issue. This poller, will send the new mention and follower id/user to the main script that would be listening to any such update.

Answer 1

I highly suggest looking into Twisted, one of the most popular async frameworks using the reactor pattern.

The “infinite loop” you are looking for is really an application pattern that Twisted implements to respond to events asynchronously, and it almost never makes sense to roll your own.

Twisted is largely used for networking requirements, but the it has a LoopingCall interface to set up the kind of functionality you require. Using the core Twisted deferred as your request model allows you to set up a long-polling server that can perform the kind of conditional network test you need. It can intially be a little intimidating, but once you understand the core components (Factories, Reactors, Protocols etc) that you need to inherit it becomes much easier to visualize your problem.

This also might be a good tutorial to start looking at the basics of the “push” model:
http://carloscarrasco.com/simple-http-pubsub-server-with-twisted.html